Mighty Leeds Weblog

Sport Viduka on the spot to fire Leeds a lifeline Leeds United 2 Manchester City 1 By Tim Rich 23 March 2004 The club is riddled with debt, forced upon it by excessive spending on underachieving players which triggered their chairman's resignation. Their manager's position is uncertain and every fan who left Elland Road last night would have understood the catastrophic consequences of relegation. Manchester City this morning find themselves in the truly uncomfortable position of owing more money than Leeds United, who are now precisely five points behind them. Once more, they demonstrated the art of outplaying opponents and losing, and Kevin Keegan's voice was laced with emotion and anger not just at the penalty awarded for a foul on Alan Smith outside the area but the dismissal of Daniel van Buyten which followed it. As Keegan noted grimly, this was the second time in successive matches that Alan Wiley had sent off one his players. Football has an ambivalen...

Sport Leeds' new owners will keep club at Elland Road By Tim Rich 23 March 2004 Mr Fixit Fox, one of the characters created by the children's author Richard Scarry, solved the problem of a leaking boat by drilling a second hole in the floor of the vessel to let the water out. Yesterday Gerald Krasner, Elland Road's third chairman in a year, and the latest band of Fixit Foxes arrived for their first day at Leeds United, a club which, until their takeover on Friday, resembled an ocean-going colander. The strategy adopted by Krasner and his Yorkshire consortium, who took over the club for £22m, is that even if Leeds survive in the Premiership there will be a wholesale player sale to remove some £15m from the wage bill. Nevertheless, although Elland Road may be sold and leased back, the ground which acclaimed the deeds of Don Revie's merciless side will not be becoming a Tesco's with a Peter Lorimer memorial delicatessen. Lorimer is now on Krasner's b...

Leeds United Football Club - Plan Is To Get United Back In The Big Time Plan Is To Get United Back In The Big Time New Leeds United director David Richmond has revealed that his consortium are extremely confident they can bring back the good times to Elland Road - but is warning it will take time and there may be casualties along the way. Richmond is part of the six man consortium headed up by new chairman Gerald Krasner that completed the successful takeover of the club on Friday afternoon after eight weeks of negotiations, and he will have a hands on role at the club as the Commercial and Marketing Director. The new board will outline their plans for United at a 12.00 noon Elland Road press conference today (to be broadcast live on Leedsunited.com), but they have wasted no time in making sure the players and coaching staff are aware of what the future holds, having met with them over the weekend. Having finally reached a conclusion to the take-over, a massive weight has be...

BBC SPORT | Football | My Club | Leeds United | Leeds takeover completed Leeds to stay put Leeds United will not be forced to sell Elland Road, according to the club's new chairman. Supporters had feared the stadium was set to be knocked down, with a supermarket built in its place. But on Monday Gerald Krasner said: "Elland Road will continue to be the home of Leeds United Football Club as long as I am chairman." On Friday Krasner led a local-based consortium in a £30m takeover of the Premiership club. He revealed the club had been £100m in debt before Friday's takeover and had been on the verge of selling the ground. "This club was facing insolvency, this club was facing extinction," said Krasner. Despite the takeover, Krasner said he expected it to take three to four years to resolve Leeds' financial woes. "This is not the end of the pain," he said. "We came off life support on Friday and we are now in recuperation....

Times Online - Sport Red Adair of Elland Road prepares for next mission BY MATT DICKINSON THERE WERE TIMES during the past five months when Trevor Birch could not see any hope of salvation for Leeds United. Liquidation was a real possibility while a club with about £100 million in debts was being messed around by Bahraini sheikhs and Ugandan property developers. “There was a genuine prospect that, if the club had gone into administration, liquidation would have followed,” Birch said yesterday, 48 hours after resigning as chief executive and handing control to a new consortium. “That would have meant the club folding completely. There were a number of times when I couldn’t see a solution because of the enormity of the problems.” It remains to be seen whether the men behind Adulant Force Ltd, the company that now owns Leeds, have the abilities and resources to be heralded as saviours, but no one else who came forward had the means to avert financial ruin. “Others, like the sheik...

Guardian Unlimited Football | News | Leeds have to sell for survival Wage bill 'unsustainable' Jason Gee Monday March 22, 2004 The Guardian Geoffrey Richmond, the former Bradford City chairman who is acting as adviser to the consortium in charge at Leeds, has confirmed the club will have to sell key players to bring down the wage bill. "What remains is a wage bill for players which is unsustainable," Richmond said only two days after the consortium finalised a deal with the club's creditors, who were owed £104m. "There are 60 professional footballers on contracts at Leeds United. Fifteen of those footballers are on contracts north of a million pounds a year. It doesn't take a genius in economics to know that that is unsustainable. So there will be players leaving the club." Gerald Krasner, who heads the six-man consortium that paid £22m for the club on Friday, gave the beleaguered Leeds supporters a more positive message when he bac...

Sport Lorimer: 'the five games we must win' Leeds are rescued, but for how long? Steve Tongue talks to an old hero about the new fight 21 March 2004 Jubilant as Leeds United may be this weekend after agreeing a £22m sale to a local consortium, any feeling that they have done the hard part and can now relax should be resisted. Indeed, it can be tested by checking the Premiership table and listening to one of the new board members, Peter Lorimer, who describes tomorrow's fixture at home to Manchester City as "one of the biggest games the club have ever had". Coming from someone who played for them in a European Cup final, four FA Cup finals and various championship deciders, that assessment alone is a vivid reminder of Leeds' predicament at the bottom of the table. Even though most of the £100m debt has been cleared by offering creditors something like a fifth of what they are owed, analysts believe it will still be difficult to meet running costs ...