So woodgate has moved to newcastle.. it wont be long before venables jumps ship as well. almost every decent player they had has been sold...Kewell is their last world class player to remain in the squad.
I hear a lot of the Leeds ST holders are throwing their tickets back at the club. Cant say I'm suprised though. Is this the price you pay for no success after spending so much? Whos next ?
The Leeds board showed their intentions by selling Ferdinand to the rags in summer,after he had starred in the World Cup.After a few seasons of relative success I would have thought Leeds fans would have felt comfortable...but that was a kick in the teeth,and now it's obvious it was only the start! I can't see where they are going with this,unless they've got some highly talented youngsters coming through.The general feeling was that if Fowler signed for City,they would not need to sell Woodgate (although I wouldn't like to see the racist scumbag playing for City & I think Newcastle are cutting it fine to get him before the deadline tomorrow).
There's no suggestion that Woodgate is a racist. Yes he was found guilty of being involved in beating up someone of a different race, but the motivation for it was an argument and fight started by the group Safraz Najib was in at the nightclub, not his race. He expressed great regret during an after the trial, and visibly suffered from the whole thing (and rightly so). Imo he got off very lightly, but he was very young at the time and appears to have learnt from it, so why shouldn't he get a 2nd chance? Bowyer on the other hand has previous convictions for violence and alleged connections to far-right groups, he is a nasty piece of work and a totally different kettle of fish.
I think you will find that Leeds are now so seriously in financial peril that it has ceased to be a long-term debt problem (even after all the sales, they remain £77m in debt) and become a cashflow one. They don't have enough cash, right here, right now, to guarantee the club's known expenditure levels can continue to be supported, even in the short term. Bear in mind that they have, in effect, made no real money on all of these sales - if you take the £12m "profit" from the sale of Rio and subtract the hit they have taken on the sales of players for less than they bought them (Keane, Fowler, Dacourt) and then also subtract the money they gave Rio in wages during his 18 months at the club, you are looking at a net change in status of zero. The only thing saving them from that is that, in accounting terms, we are talking about more than one financial year and, as such the "profit" counts as a profit. In March, they are due to be compelled to settle the outstanding severance claim with O'Leary too - that will be several million pounds. All the money saved comes from a drop in expenditure on wages - they are not operating to a "football plan" at the moment - put simply, the board don't care whether the team is suffering or Venables has a decent squad to pick from. This is a full-scale fire-fighting exercise and, as things stand, they are still losing it.
Thanks for this analysis, Matt. I had no idea things were THAT serious. Figured it was bad, but not "a full-scale firefighting exercise" as you put it. wow. You seem to have a very good understanding of the details here. Can you tell me -- Did the club do something especially unwise to get itself into its current mess? Is there any chance that other clubs could find themselves in similar circumstances in the near future?
What I find interesting/sad about the Leeds situation was their "going for broke"-is this the only real way for a team in their position to make the leap into the elite? Seems a tough price to pay. For the record the fire sale: July 2002 Danny Hall (Walsall) Free July 2002 Rio Ferdinand (Man Utd) £29.3m (rising to maximum £33.3m) Aug 2002 Robbie Keane (Tottenham) £7m Nov 2002 Craig Farrell (Carlisle) £50,000 Jan 2003 Lee Bowyer (West Ham) £100,000 Jan 2003 Oliver Dacourt (AS Roma) Loan Jan 2003 Robbie Fowler (Man City) £6m Jan 2003 Jonathan Woodgate (Newcastle) £9m ----------------------------------- Total £42,450,000
Well, I have to be honest, the only insight I have into the current situation is via a friend and a colleague, both of whom are shareholders and, as such, are privvy to the same information any other shareholder of a plc is. As to how they got into this mess, it's simple - the gambled heavily on the only game in town and lost. Effectively, when Ridsdale and O' Leary got going, some three years back, the game's finances were still in a dot-com-esque state of perpetual delirium - this was the goose that would never stop laying golden eggs back then. Under Ridsdale, Leeds embarked upon a period of rapid, aggressive expansion, buying big players on big deals (and lesser players on big deals, it has to be said). The gamble was that a sufficiently deep and talented squad, under what was doubtlessly an energetic, courageous and ambitious young manager, would be able to justify crippling short term expenditure by qualifying for the Champions League on a consistent, long-term basis. And so it proved, initially - they got into the Champions League in his first full season, then to the semis- of that competition in their first campaign at that level. Problem is, that's the only time they managed it. Since then, they have failed to qualify and, in the interim, the arse has dropped out of football finances. So their big, expensive and highly-paid squad was a very costly residue from what, in retrospect, proved to be a very injudicious gamble. Obviously, the trial of Bowyer and Woodgate did not help, nor did taking on a vast loan to pay for a new stadium at a time when things were already going pearshaped. Could other clubs be in similar strife? Oh yes - Chelsea already are and Newcastle and Liverpool cannot afford to miss out on Champions League footbal if they hope to avoid that fate.
I've recently read something similar - that the Champions League sucked them into spending way over the top and when it didn't materialise reality kicked in. It's a pity to see a club collapse like that and you have to think there are others who may do the same.
This is also not confined to England. Lazio is in serious financial trouble (although it does not seem to have effected their performance on the field, yet) compounded by the fact that, like Leeds, they are a listed company so cannot just fudge the books and hide in someone's deep pockets. There are aspects of Italian company law that they are obligated to comply with (as is no doubt the case with Leeds, as well). Kaiserslauten just got hit with about a EUR12 million tax bill that they apparently don't have the cash to pay and are currently in relegation danger, which would probably sink them (if the tax man doesn't). The times they are a changin...
And about time too, to be honest. Too many clubs have been "living the dream", as Ridsdale incredibly described his stewardship of Leeds United yesterday, and it was high time that the game woke up. Interestingly, on the topic of Lazio, their performance this season is probably not DESPITE their parlous financial state - if anything, it is BECAUSE of it. All the players have been told their wages are now performance related, you see ....