Telegraph 1/5/07
Leeds pay devilishly heavy price for past sins
By Sue Mott
The fall of Leeds United has been so precipitate and catastrophic, like a runaway toboggan down the Cresta Run, it is tempting to believe in some kind of supernatural retribution. As though a Faustian pact was forged during the Don Revie era, now demanding repayment. 'Let us be the best, the most feared, the most ferocious team in England but come the 21st century, Oh Great One with the pitch fork, you can get your own back'. And here it is. The vengeance. The famous Yorkshire club, on the verge of administration, faces relegation into the third tier of English football for the first time in a once-proud history.
Hard times: fans give the Leeds players a message after being condemned to near-certain relegation
How did it come to this? It is almost bizarre that at a time when Premiership clubs, and even Southampton in the Championship, are causing a feeding frenzy among the piranhas of world finance, Leeds United are crushed and penniless. New brooms are sweeping through football countrywide, Elland Road can't even afford a new broom.
This is the club where Arsenal's Herbert Chapman learned his trade, where Revie invented organised brilliance, where Howard Wilkinson won the title parading no less a talent than Eric Cantona. Where players like Bremner, Giles, Charlton, Clarke, Hunter preyed on, rather than played, terrified opposition under the guiding hand of their Don. Elland Road was a huge and passionate fortress. Now, like the training ground, it is sold-off and leased back to the club. Leeds are living on sufferance.
Have devilish forces been at work? Did they begin to unleash their tide of misfortune even as the club reached the semi-final of the Champions' League against Valencia in 2001, just six years ago, persuading the then-chairman Peter Ridsdale to borrow heavily on the strength of prospective television and sponsorship revenue, except that neither ever transpired. Perhaps they did. The devil has a track record of temptation.
He, the old goat, may well have been in the area while Jonathan Woodgate, then a Leeds centre-half, was convicted of affray after a street assault on a student. Lee Bowyer, his colleague, was declared innocent.
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There began a free-fall into chaos. David O'Leary was sacked as manager, replaced by Terry Venables who proceeded to take the club to within an ace of relegation by winning only 16 games out of 42.
Peter Reid kept them up, then took them down and Eddie Gray, the old boy, found himself presiding over ruins. All the players of any value were sold off, like pieces of artwork or still-operable gas cookers, when a house is repossessed. Meanwhile the ownership of the club was being passed about like a parcel of dubious value - which it was.
Ridsdale resigned and a professor of economics took up the cudgels, only to hand them on to an insolvency expert, who sold off most of the assets, both brick and human, to reduce the gargantuan debt. The club was not so much run as systematically ransacked. Where are they now? Well, Ridsdale, for one, is chairman of Cardiff and side-stepping, with breathtaking gall, all responsibility for the fall. In fact, he was seen proferring a glass of champagne to the former Leeds commercial director, Adam Pearson, now chairman of Hull City, when their teams played each other at the weekend. Shamelessness 1, Accountability 0.
And so to the last chapter of accidents. Poor Kevin Blackwell being booted out despite heaving the club to the play-off finals against Watford. They were a game away from the Premiership just one year ago and now the reign of the crosspatch and diminutive Dennis Wise has brought them lower than at any time in their history. The chairman, Ken Bates, who planted £10 million of his Chelsea windfall into the club having been spurned by Sheffield Wednesday, might or might not rue the appointment of such a novice and controversial manager. We would like to know. But he is not answering his phone, which is rare when there is an opinion to be expressed.
Bates has always been fond of Wise, but the little Chelsea captain has fought his demons. He was sentenced to three months' imprisonment, overturned on appeal, for assaulting a taxi driver in 1995.
He was accused of biting a Mallorcan player in the Cup-Winners' Cup in 1999. He missed 15 Chelsea games due to suspension in the 1998-99 season. None of these incidents disprove his fitness as a manager - witness one Roy Keane, once also excitable - but the furious outburst after the Crystal Palace match this season when he accused one of his players of being a 'mole' and passing on tactical trade secrets to the opposition, indicated unnecessary hysteria.
As Sir Alex Ferguson said of Wise: "He could start a fight in an empty house". So could Sir Alex, for that matter, but Manchester United aren't sliding into old Division Three. That is a difference.
Even the fans are revolting. Against each other and everything else. On Saturday the supporters that remained in their seats turned on the gormless exhibitionists who invaded the pitch, forcing the temporary abandonment of the match against Ipswich. It is a club imploding as doom approaches.
The devil's work is all but over, except you cannot help wondering whether human frailty has its part in the drama after all.
Thirty years ago Revie resigned in uproar as England manager, his reputation forever tarnished, to take up a £340,000 tax-free post as manger of the United Arab Emirates team. Only a few voices were raised in his defence, notably his old Leeds United players. John Giles was one of them. "But who isn't greedy?" he said. The sentiment is hugely apt.
There is nothing supernatural about the story of Leeds United.
Super greedy and sadly human, more like it. Leeds United have been devoured by ambition unfulfilled and continuous, ill-conceived human error to the point where they have traded Premiership life (average annual turnover £75 million) to League One (£5 million). It cannot make them terribly attractive to prospective buyers. Except that by entering administration at this stage of the season the automatically-triggered 10-point deduction may affect this season and not next. Quite a smart, if ethically-debatable, move.
What are the football authorities going to do about it? Having failed to deduct points from West Ham United despite absolutely solid grounds of precedent, there seems to be a moratorium on fitting punishments to big teams on hard times. Maybe Leeds, in their darkest hour, are going to have a slice of luck. Maybe they've done another deal with the devil.
Leeds pay devilishly heavy price for past sins
By Sue Mott
The fall of Leeds United has been so precipitate and catastrophic, like a runaway toboggan down the Cresta Run, it is tempting to believe in some kind of supernatural retribution. As though a Faustian pact was forged during the Don Revie era, now demanding repayment. 'Let us be the best, the most feared, the most ferocious team in England but come the 21st century, Oh Great One with the pitch fork, you can get your own back'. And here it is. The vengeance. The famous Yorkshire club, on the verge of administration, faces relegation into the third tier of English football for the first time in a once-proud history.
Hard times: fans give the Leeds players a message after being condemned to near-certain relegation
How did it come to this? It is almost bizarre that at a time when Premiership clubs, and even Southampton in the Championship, are causing a feeding frenzy among the piranhas of world finance, Leeds United are crushed and penniless. New brooms are sweeping through football countrywide, Elland Road can't even afford a new broom.
This is the club where Arsenal's Herbert Chapman learned his trade, where Revie invented organised brilliance, where Howard Wilkinson won the title parading no less a talent than Eric Cantona. Where players like Bremner, Giles, Charlton, Clarke, Hunter preyed on, rather than played, terrified opposition under the guiding hand of their Don. Elland Road was a huge and passionate fortress. Now, like the training ground, it is sold-off and leased back to the club. Leeds are living on sufferance.
Have devilish forces been at work? Did they begin to unleash their tide of misfortune even as the club reached the semi-final of the Champions' League against Valencia in 2001, just six years ago, persuading the then-chairman Peter Ridsdale to borrow heavily on the strength of prospective television and sponsorship revenue, except that neither ever transpired. Perhaps they did. The devil has a track record of temptation.
He, the old goat, may well have been in the area while Jonathan Woodgate, then a Leeds centre-half, was convicted of affray after a street assault on a student. Lee Bowyer, his colleague, was declared innocent.
advertisement
There began a free-fall into chaos. David O'Leary was sacked as manager, replaced by Terry Venables who proceeded to take the club to within an ace of relegation by winning only 16 games out of 42.
Peter Reid kept them up, then took them down and Eddie Gray, the old boy, found himself presiding over ruins. All the players of any value were sold off, like pieces of artwork or still-operable gas cookers, when a house is repossessed. Meanwhile the ownership of the club was being passed about like a parcel of dubious value - which it was.
Ridsdale resigned and a professor of economics took up the cudgels, only to hand them on to an insolvency expert, who sold off most of the assets, both brick and human, to reduce the gargantuan debt. The club was not so much run as systematically ransacked. Where are they now? Well, Ridsdale, for one, is chairman of Cardiff and side-stepping, with breathtaking gall, all responsibility for the fall. In fact, he was seen proferring a glass of champagne to the former Leeds commercial director, Adam Pearson, now chairman of Hull City, when their teams played each other at the weekend. Shamelessness 1, Accountability 0.
And so to the last chapter of accidents. Poor Kevin Blackwell being booted out despite heaving the club to the play-off finals against Watford. They were a game away from the Premiership just one year ago and now the reign of the crosspatch and diminutive Dennis Wise has brought them lower than at any time in their history. The chairman, Ken Bates, who planted £10 million of his Chelsea windfall into the club having been spurned by Sheffield Wednesday, might or might not rue the appointment of such a novice and controversial manager. We would like to know. But he is not answering his phone, which is rare when there is an opinion to be expressed.
Bates has always been fond of Wise, but the little Chelsea captain has fought his demons. He was sentenced to three months' imprisonment, overturned on appeal, for assaulting a taxi driver in 1995.
He was accused of biting a Mallorcan player in the Cup-Winners' Cup in 1999. He missed 15 Chelsea games due to suspension in the 1998-99 season. None of these incidents disprove his fitness as a manager - witness one Roy Keane, once also excitable - but the furious outburst after the Crystal Palace match this season when he accused one of his players of being a 'mole' and passing on tactical trade secrets to the opposition, indicated unnecessary hysteria.
As Sir Alex Ferguson said of Wise: "He could start a fight in an empty house". So could Sir Alex, for that matter, but Manchester United aren't sliding into old Division Three. That is a difference.
Even the fans are revolting. Against each other and everything else. On Saturday the supporters that remained in their seats turned on the gormless exhibitionists who invaded the pitch, forcing the temporary abandonment of the match against Ipswich. It is a club imploding as doom approaches.
The devil's work is all but over, except you cannot help wondering whether human frailty has its part in the drama after all.
Thirty years ago Revie resigned in uproar as England manager, his reputation forever tarnished, to take up a £340,000 tax-free post as manger of the United Arab Emirates team. Only a few voices were raised in his defence, notably his old Leeds United players. John Giles was one of them. "But who isn't greedy?" he said. The sentiment is hugely apt.
There is nothing supernatural about the story of Leeds United.
Super greedy and sadly human, more like it. Leeds United have been devoured by ambition unfulfilled and continuous, ill-conceived human error to the point where they have traded Premiership life (average annual turnover £75 million) to League One (£5 million). It cannot make them terribly attractive to prospective buyers. Except that by entering administration at this stage of the season the automatically-triggered 10-point deduction may affect this season and not next. Quite a smart, if ethically-debatable, move.
What are the football authorities going to do about it? Having failed to deduct points from West Ham United despite absolutely solid grounds of precedent, there seems to be a moratorium on fitting punishments to big teams on hard times. Maybe Leeds, in their darkest hour, are going to have a slice of luck. Maybe they've done another deal with the devil.