TSB Guide to Neil Kilkenny yelling at Ken Bates - The Square Ball 19/7/22
KILLA VS BATES
Written by: Moxcowhite • Daniel Chapman
Ken Bates’ diabolical insight, used at every club he owned,
was that while players could be popular with fans, loyalty always went first to
the institution. It takes a lot to separate a supporter from their club, but
players come and go. So if the official club media channels portrayed players
as mercenaries trying a swindle with their contract demands, fans would take
the club’s — Bates’ — side against them. The players couldn’t say anything
back, because Bates controlled the club’s media and unauthorised interviews
meant fines, and more criticism. This was useful in contract negotiations — why
should a player get a pay rise when the fans don’t like him? — and transfers,
because by the time the player left, the fans would have heard so much about
their contract, they’d be happy to see them go. Supporters would keep handing
their money over to the club, and the chairman wouldn’t have to give it to the
players or their agents he said were ‘robbing’ it.
Kilkenny’s exit in summer 2011 was typical: he was offered a
contract in October, turned it down because he could get more elsewhere than
the small increase being offered on his League One wages, then spent the rest
of the season being accused of greed.
“I didn’t want to leave and I made that clear so many times
last season,” Kilkenny said. “I had three-and-a-half years with the club and I
loved my time there. The way it all finished was really disappointing and I
thought my performances over the whole of last season proved my worth. The club
always got 100 per cent from me and I felt I’d earned a better offer than the
one they gave me. Sometimes that’s how football works out but I want to make it
clear that I wanted to stay, and in a way my hand was forced.”
Bates had a shelf life, though, and underestimated how fans
would keep getting attached to good players while his schtick became tired.
That’s why the start of 2011/12 brought protesting fans (“Sickpots,” Bates
called them, and “dissidents”) onto the streets. Kasper Schmeichel was sold to
Leicester while he was on holiday, surprised to learn from Sky Sports News that
he’d turned down a contract offer he didn’t know about. An offer from
Saint-Étienne for Max Gradel was portrayed as too good to refuse, but Bates
then claimed he’d been screwed by Gradel’s agent and the exchange rate so the
fee couldn’t be used for new players. After months being criticised by Bates on
the club’s in-house Yorkshire Radio station, Bradley Johnson — who had tried to
answer back on TalkSport — and Neil Kilkenny left on free transfers, to Norwich
and Bristol City. Three of those departing players had come up from League One
with Leeds, while Schmeichel was obviously better than his replacements: Andy
Lonergan for £200,000 and Paul Rachubka for free. Michael Brown also came for
free to replace Johnson and Kilkenny, plus Danny Pugh, Darren O’Dea and Andy
Keogh (all on loan); then Mikael Forssell and Mika Väyrynen turned up, right at
the end of the transfer window, again for free.
Leeds had finished 7th in their first season after promotion
from League One, maybe a couple of new defenders away from pushing for the
play-offs and promotion to the Premier League. Instead the team had been gutted
and the East Stand turned into a building site for new corporate facilities,
being paid for by a loan against future season ticket sales. Neil Kilkenny had
noticed. “I looked at the team that has been playing recently for Leeds and
there were only three players from last season,” he said. “That is really
disappointing for a club like Leeds. They should be keeping that team together
from last year and adding a couple more.”
This was something else Bates hadn’t counted on. Enfield
born but Australia raised midfielder Neil Kilkenny often got mixed reviews from
Leeds supporters, but a bond had grown between the fans and the players who
rescued the club from League One. That put Kilkenny in a rare position so that,
when he hammered a 25 yard equaliser in off the bar for Bristol City at Elland
Road, then turned and ran to the West Stand, blowing angry kisses, pointing and
shouting, there was a moment when the fans wondered what was going on — then
delight when they worked it out. He wasn’t looking at anybody else, wasn’t
targeting anybody else, wasn’t gesturing at anybody else, but Ken Bates. Stick
it to ‘im, Killa! Give it to Ken!
And to be fair to Kilkenny, he’d been on the receiving end
in the build up to the match. Bates was never shy about airing his grievances
with former players on his weekly Yorkshire Radio address, and with Bristol
City coming at the weekend, he’d been claiming Kilkenny told Leeds he was
‘leaving for a bigger club, and ended up at Bristol City’. Killa replied before
the game, telling Bristol City’s website, “There were reasons why I left in the
summer and not the reasons Ken Bates said. I just leave him to rant on and he’s
always arguing with someone.” The goal, and the fact it was a good one, the
celebration, and the post-match interviews, were Kilkenny’s unexpected golden
chance to clap back in full.
“I didn’t really want to celebrate in front of the fans,” he
said. “But I needed to make a point to the chairman and his chief executive
[Shaun Harvey] because everyone here has said hello to me except for the
chairman and the chief executive, which is disappointing.
“I have seen a few things said by the chairman over the last
couple of days. He said that I left Leeds to go to a smaller club and that was
very disrespectful to both me and to Bristol City. That is really, really
disappointing… but that’s him. What can you do? I made a lot of appearances in
a short amount of time for Leeds — almost 150 in three-and-a-half years, and
that’s not really heard of these days. It wasn’t nice to hear those things said
because I always stated that I wanted to stay at the club. Obviously he was a
bit disappointed that I left but he made the decision and he shouldn’t have
said those things. Maybe he was feeling a bit upset that I left.
“I did blow a kiss. I can’t stress enough that it wasn’t to
the fans. He [Bates] didn’t blow a kiss back — he just sat there with a stony
face. I can only give my opinion about what I have seen at the club. I didn’t
want to say anything but after what he has said in the papers, I have to say my
piece. There was no need for him to say anything because I haven’t said
anything about the club. I have only ever said that I love the club and didn’t
want to leave — that is all. I was made out to be the bad guy in this situation
by certain directors, but I wasn’t. I always said all along that I wanted to
stay and obviously the powers above had the decision to make and they didn’t
see me staying at the club.”
It was personal, but the bond with the fans was reciprocal.
Nobody at Leeds had wanted to be in League One — and Kilkenny had been at
Arsenal in his youth, so he didn’t either. Everyone involved made a deep
emotional investment in Leeds doing well, and wanted to carry on, pushing Simon
Grayson’s squad to the Premier League. That aim, for fans and players alike,
was now bumping too often against the way Bates was running things. From the
safe distance of Bristol, Kilkenny could talk.
“It is hard to speak out when you are a Leeds player and
things are going on around you,” he said. “I was really close to Jermaine
Beckford and they let him go on a free transfer. As a player, it is hard to see
that but you can’t say anything because they will keep you quiet by fining you
or something like that.
“Over the years it has happened over and over again and
people have blamed the players for that. But now people are starting to see
that when it happens four, five, six times, there is something else going on.”
What was going on in the short term was more moaning from
Ken Bates, who if he couldn’t fine Kilkenny himself, could try and get the FA
to do it.
“He can’t justify or excuse his behaviour,” Bates said. “It shows
exactly why we weren’t sad to see him go. Neither myself or Shaun [Harvey] ever
go down to see players on match days. Why would we? The fact is he asked for a
wage which we didn’t think he was worth. He’s a petulant sod with big ideas of
himself. We might report his behaviour to the FA because we’ve got CCTV footage
of it.”
Quite why he needed CCTV footage when Manish and the gang
had all the match footage on the Football League Show wasn’t clear. Clearer was
that Bates was losing his grip. Scanning tweets posted at the time, the ones
that stand out are from Leeds fans saying things like, ‘I never rated Kilkenny
much, but good on him for sticking it to Bates’. Of course it helped that,
thanks to Bristol manager Keith Millen taking Kilkenny off (he was having the
game of his life) and Luciano Becchio flicking a cross onto Ross McCormack at
the back post, Leeds won the match 2-1.
HOW BIG WAS THE FA FINE AND SUSPENSION FOR KILKENNY?
Give over. If Bates was running out of friends in Leeds,
he’d long since burned his bridges with the FA. I doubt anyone there had any
appetite for reviewing grainy CCTV footage from whatever decrepit system Bates
was refusing to upgrade in the West Stand.
DID KILLA EVER BACK DOWN?