Most of you probably didn’t know John Reynolds and I suspect the vast majority of our supporters don’t give a second thought to the hard work the Elland Road ground staff put in every week to ensure Leeds United play on a pitch worthy of the clubs reputation.

At the time of John’s passing, I tweeted that it stood testament to his hard work that whenever the rest of the country is postponing games due to bad weather, Leeds United always seem able to overcome severe conditions with no impact on our schedule.

John’s connection to Leeds United started in 1948, arriving as a trainee alongside the great John Charles. Unfortunately, injury put an end to Reynolds’ playing career but he still maintained a career in football, working as a groundsman for Leeds United for the rest of his life.

Paul Dews wrote on the official Leeds United website that “John was a familiar face to all who have passed through the doors of the club and will be sorely missed by all who knew him” so it is extremely disappointing to hear that Shaun Harvey rejected the request for the club to hold a minutes silence in his honour.

As explained in a letter published on Clarke One Nil, Shaun Harvey has decided that if the club agreed to honour John Reynolds then “everyone” connected with the club would want similar tributes. If, by “everyone”, Shaun Harvey means hard-working individuals that have dedicated their entire life to Leeds United then I should damn well hope so.

A Leeds United fan posting on the ever-popular WACCOE forum summed the situation up perfectly;

“The whole minutes applause/minutes silence has been devalued and I for one didn’t clap for Muamba. It wasn’t because I didn’t wish him well it was because it had nothing to do with Leeds United. Fast forward to John Reynolds, a man who has worked and supported the club for 60 years, surely he deserves a minutes applause? The club is being ran by muppets and this is yet another PR disaster.”

The real crime here is that Shaun Harvey has no right to make decisions for the Leeds United fanbase, and the arrogance of the man to think he can speaks volumes to how massively out-of-touch the current regime is with the supporters of this club.

Whether we knew John personally or not, six decades of hard work and commitment to Leeds United means more to our fans than Shaun Harvey will ever understand. Leeds United is a club built on working-class heroes, and John Reynolds epitomises that spirit.

There’s no real shock here though I suppose. The whole business plan of our current ownership sums up how poorly they understand their customers. Corporate hospitality, executive boxes and ridiculously over-priced tickets are as much “Leeds” as David Cameron is a pasty-munching “commoner”.

But Shaun Harvey’s ignorance needn’t dictate the actions of our fans. I’d love nothing more than to hear a roof-lifting chorus of “stand up, and sing for John” or a minutes applause immediately following kick-off during our final home game of 2011/12 against Leicester City this coming Saturday. It would also be nice to hear Shaun Harvey issue an apology. admitting he was wrong and reversing his decision, but I suspect an “unofficial” attempt from the fans is the more likely outcome.

Case in point is Simon Grayson, a man who I defended to the hilt throughout his tenure at Elland Road. It was never all that difficult considering his win percentage and highly successful start to the job, but when things went off the rails a little, some felt I was allowing Ken Bates’ failings to cover those of Simon Grayson.

I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Reactionary responses always seem to cloud the bigger picture, and under current circumstances you can’t have it both ways. You can either accept that the side is underfunded and that mid-table is the best we’re capable of (which is what the majority have said all along and predicted long before Max Gradel and Jonny Howson were sold) or you can blame the manager for the kind of inconsistent form indicative of mid-table teams – thus excusing Ken Bates by default. If you expect better than what we’ve seen then what you’re saying is that the team is better than a mid-table outfit. Anything else is contradictory.

People can excuse themselves by pointing to performance levels and tactical observations offered with the benefit of hindsight, but statistics don’t lie. Nor does the league table. If the club has paid for a mid-table team, and we’re in mid-table, then Simon Grayson was living up to all expectations.

When Max Gradel, Jonny Howson, Bradley Johnson and Neil Kilkenny were sold/given away and replaced by has-beens, frees and loanees there was absolute uproar. The fans knew the cheap replacements and loanees would not be of a similar skill level, or hold a similar level of passion for the club. Replacing a young heart-on-his-sleeve midfielder like Bradley Johnson with a has-been journeyman like Michael Brown was never going to be an improvement – and Simon Grayson can’t be blamed for that, he wanted Keith Andrews! But in an oh-so-typical Yorkshire Radio rant from Ken Bates, the Leeds chairman blasted his ridiculous wage demands and Shaun Harvey and Gwyn Williams brought us Brown instead. Andrews meanwhile ended up at the mighty Ipswich Town who, despite a lower turnover, higher wage budget and a similar amount of playing staff to ourselves, could afford him.

But we know all this. We know that our squad of young and hungry players has been systematically cast off and replaced by has-beens, unknowns and loanees because the club first failed to secure new contracts (Shaun Harvey) and secondly, failed to provide adequate funding for suitable replacements (Ken Bates).

So who should we be blaming?

Should Simon Grayson be held accountable for achieving mid-table with a mid-table team?

Should we not be questioning the distinctly average wage bill? The non-existant transfer funds? The constant sales of key players?

If you disagree with my assertion that Simon Grayson was underfunded, then fair enough. You’re well within your rights to complain about the performance. You’re wrong (see this link), but that’s beside the point – at least your opinions aren’t contradictory.

For the rest of you, you can’t look at the evidence, set your expectations to “incredibly low” then complain when the reality lives up to your own predictions. Doing so excuses Ken Bates and his minions, and that’s all Simon Grayson’s sacking was ever about. It was a simple ploy to distract the dissidents by creating division – Ken Bates has been doing it for years, just ask the Chelsea fans.

If you subscribe to the statement that Simon Grayson was sacked to give us a chance at the play-offs, then why are we sat here two weeks and six dropped points later without a replacement? If Simon Grayson was underachieving as much as Ken Bates likes to claim, then why wait until the end of January when there was talk of his sacking at the beginning? And why was every poor performance the managers fault before Simon Grayson was sacked, and now it’s apparently the players?

At this point in time, I actually think Simon Grayson’s downfall was that he over-achieved. The problems we’re now experiencing have existed all along, and always will whilst football isn’t the main priority of those running our football club.

When Simon Grayson led us to a 7th placed finish last season, it set the tone for everything that followed. It allowed the club to pretend the team didn’t need any further investment – “maybe a little tinkering around the edges, but nothing major” was the general theme of transfer discussion from the club – and has since been used as evidence we can do better, despite the sale of key players Max Gradel and Jonny Howson.

So are those of us that write this site overcritical of Ken Bates? Well, the crux of the matter is this – as a hard-working (well, working) customer of Leeds United Football Club, I expect a proportionate sum of my money to be spent on the squad I go to watch. I expect the biggest one club city in England to be aiming towards a successful future, and for the manager to be given the necessary funding to achieve that dream. I don’t want a hotel, I couldn’t care less about the museum and I managed to get suitably drunk long before Billy’s Bar and the Pavilion were added.

These things all come down to Ken Bates. A manager can only be judged by the funding (relative to division) that he receives, and in Simon Grayson’s case, he had a mid-table budget. Who else am I supposed to blame?

All I really expect is for football to be the priority. Is that really too much to ask of a football club?

This article is a guest contribution written by Dje. If you’d like to have an article considered for publication here on The Scratching Shed, please use the online form. 

Prior to our welcome, albeit fortuitous, win at home to Ipswich, Simon Grayson made a promise to Leeds United fans: that there’ll be no more key player sales following Jonny Howson’s imminent sale to Norwich City.

Unfortunately such matters are almost entirely beyond Grayson’s call on three accounts.

First of all: disharmony amongst the players. An unhappy player is not one easy to keep at a club, regardless of how much you might not want them to leave. Even during Saturday’s game, The National, an albeit unlikely revelatory source, being a United Arab Emirates-based newsfeed, revealed that Robert Snodgrass has now ended any contract discussions to further his stay at Elland Road. The reasons given were one of Grayson’s making, the other of a policy led by Shaun Harvey & Ken Bates.

Apparently Snodgrass is not chuffed that he wasn’t made team captain, an honour given to – and fluffed today – by keeper Andy Lonergen.

I think many others will also be surprised that Snodgrass wasn’t made team captain. OK, he does not always have the greatest of impact, being marked out of the game on occasions, but there is no doubting his commitment to the club. That and the fact that he is the one remaining outstanding talents that we hold, why Grayson would want to unsettle the last jewel by selecting Lonergen as captain is beyond me.

The second alleged reason why Snodgrass has ended contract negotiations is in sympathy with most Leeds fans after Howson’s sale to Norwich was revealed earlier this week: a sense of betrayal by the club that we have underinvested and failed to bring in the quality of players expected and promised. This leads to the second factor why the fate of the squad is predominantly beyond Grayson’s making: the financial directive at Elland Road which is led by that irascible pair, Ken Bates and Shaun Harvey.

For many months The Scratching Shed has led the line to point out how dominant these two figures are in leading our transfer activity (or a lack of one). Bates has his own building project at Elland Road to keep his hands, and our invested cash, busy. Harvey has been left with the internal financial governorship of LUFC transfers. This is the guy who has so single-handedly failed to secure our best players – Johnson, Kilkenny, and more recently Howson and White – on contract durations that keep them at the club as key players, or assets for eventual sale. Running down their contracts, allowing them to leave on a free or nominal amounts (£750,000 in the case of Howson according to The National’s article) seems to be Harvey’s cream.

Make no mistake, if Snodgrass has declared his unwillingness to discuss his contract being extended that can only be read as a desire to be elsewhere, and presumably at a Premiership club or a Championship one with real ambitions of going up. This is not to question Snodgrass’s desire to keep playing for Leeds. He won’t do an O’Brien on us. Once more he was on hand and willing, to get our underperforming team out of gaol and back on track this afternoon. But his alleged move to end contract talks will work perfectly with Harvey and Bates’ rubric to cash-in on him either during the remaining days of this transfer window or, and more likely, in the summer.

The combined force of Harvey and Bates as the ringmasters of the size and lightly paid composition of our squad was shown in the Ipswich programme notes. The delightful Ken revealed to the non-‘moron’ Leeds fans, those who he feels marginally accountable too, that we are currently over-spending on wages to the tune of 23%. Our player budget was £9.5m for the year, but is currently running at £11,722,000 per annum.

Bates failed to suggest if this imbalance was down to the falling attendance levels at Elland Road (just shy of 23,000 today), possibly as this would offer an empowerment and encouragement to ‘the vociferous few’ who are refusing to attend (especially our home matches) and/or renew their season tickets. Alternatively Bates was simply leading up to a future denouement of dissenting Leeds fans as the culprits for a financial imbalance and justification for future player sales. How dare we not pay Premiership prices for League One-standard football! How dare we not attend!

You see, Bates’ desire to flash the figures to the fans can be read in two disparate ways.

First let’s revel in the spin. Bates added in his programme notes that the imbalance of the two quoted amounts (‘a bad business practice’ as he called it) acts as ‘a demonstration of how far we have backed the manager’. How sweet that Bates is risking losing money to finance Grayson’s squad. But then that is the second way it can be read from Bates: THIS is Grayson’s squad, not only too expensive, but underperforming expensive players ~ blame him not me!

This is a classic move to distance himself from any personal responsibility for turning the club into a ‘selling club’, and under-performing on the field. It is the third reason why Grayson is not in the position to dictate the fate of the Leeds squad ~ because he is being set-up by Bates as the scapegoat if the fans so desire one. One who Bates and the omnipresent Shaun Harvey will claim has been over-resourced financially (despite it being Harvey who does the negotiations), who has brought in inadequate players (despite it is Harvey who does the negotiations) and under-performed in the league (despite having a squad of players unsettled by the Bates-Harvey financial directive of if-in-doubt-sell-and-find-spurious-reasoning-for-it).

With his hands bound, it is a pointless exercise to believe a word Grayson says regarding transfers. It is not that he is being deliberately deceitful; merely that he has almost no control over the destiny of what he is saying.

Good luck Simon.

Guest contribution written by Dje 

When it comes to sensationalism few do it better than Ken Bates. In his programme notes today, he speaks of a £2m overspend on the £9.5m player budget set at the start of this season. In doing so, the Leeds United chairman thought he’d put an end to chants of “where’s all our money gone?” by throwing a huge number out there to distract Leeds United fans.

Interestingly though, Ken Bates fails to offer any point of comparison. As impressive as £11.5m sounds, it’s nothing more than a number without context  - in this case, the context is the rest of the Championship.

Before we get into all that, here’s the quote in full from Ken Bates’ programme notes;

January is a month of the transfer window; excitement, rumours, misinformation, double-dealing and shadow boxing. All the fun of the fair. Meanwhile, the club’s management have to cope with all this while still running the club.

In Leeds’ case, we have bought Danny Pugh, obtained the loan of Andros Townsend, extended Maik Taylor’s contract and are in negotiations with a few players that are already at the club.

“Where’s the money gone?” is the latest chant from the vociferous few. Well, I’ll tell them! Simon Grayson’s player budget was £9.5m for the year. As I write, we have so far committed £11.722m, over budget by nearly 23 per cent.

For anyone that doesn’t understand what he means by “player budget”, this is the collective total of all transfer money spent (and allegedly received) alongside the players wages for the year.

Unlike most clubs, Leeds United’s transfer kitty is included in the wage budget.

With £9.5m to spend, Simon Grayson can theoretically afford to pay 25 players (an average Championship squad) £7,300 each, which sounds reasonable enough for a Championship player.

The problem is, that unless Simon Grayson gets all his players for free, he can’t actually afford to offer them that amount because every time he spends money it comes off the total budget. Spend £2-3m buying the quality additions Leeds United fans are demanding and you’re left with very little to pay them.

What’s interesting is how this relates to our turnover. Plans are afoot to cap wage spending to 70% of turnover. Since our last published accounts were 2009-10 the £27m turnover I’m going to use is based on League One football. It’s safe to say our turnover has increased significantly since then.

Nevertheless, even when we use the League One figure against Ken Bates early season budget this only accounts for 35.2% of our turnover. Even with the “overspend”, we’re still a long way short at 43.4%.

I strongly suspect turnover for last season was closer to the £35m mark which would reduce that percentage even further. You also have to take into consideration that The FA’s guidelines do not take transfer fees into account, which is what Ken Bates has done here. That means other clubs could spend 70% of their turnover on wages and still pay for new players with other funds.

How This Compares To Other Clubs 

As the last published accounts are 2009/10, I’m going to use a table published a while back by The Swiss Ramble – A renowned football blogger and financial expert who compiled the following using public accounts;

As you can see, Leeds United’s reported spending on wages is much higher than what Ken Bates is now telling us. This isn’t because he’s “cooked the books” or is lying to us now, it’s simply because Leeds United’s published figures are incredibly vague. The £14m above includes everybody – Ken Bates, Shaun Harvey, Simon Grayson, the coaching staff, the tea ladies etc…

Knowing what we know now, and assuming our budget has risen somewhat since League One, I’d suggest Millwall (also League One figures) is closer to the actual spending on the first team that year – perhaps a million or so more in Leeds’ case.

Unlike Leeds, most other clubs separate their figures out to offer further transparency. Leeds are not the exception to the rule, but their accounts are amongst the vaguest I’ve ever encountered.

Setting aside that figure entirely and using the figure Ken Bates gave us today, in 2009/10 only six clubs would have spent less than Leeds United on wages.

In itself, that is a shocking statistic, but when you consider that other clubs have separate wage and transfer budgets, it gets even worse.

All of a sudden, the £11.5m Ken mentions starts to sound less impressive. Simon Grayson has basically been left to lead a promotion charge with the budget for a relegation battle.

So we’ll ask you again Ken – “Where’s all our money gone?” 

Despite a severe injury crisis threatening to end any hope of a Leeds United play-off push, a team desperately in need of strengthening is attracting little attention from the daily rag fuelled rumour mill.

Not since the days of George Graham, when Leeds United were so incredibly boring that the tabloids couldn’t bear commenting on us have their pages been so lacking in Leeds United rumour/scandal/myth.

Perhaps that’s a good thing however? After all, the rumours serve only to heighten expectations which invariably leads to a massive fall when the transfer window closes and Michael Brown is as close as we’ve got to an exciting new recruit.

Generally speaking of course, when we do sign players they usually come out of the blue, so maybe we should be encouraged by the absence of Leeds United rumour?

I suspect there may be an alternative explanation however. All the warning signs are there that this could be another forgettable transfer window for The Whites, despite the promising start made by signing the sensational Andros Townsend on a season end loan deal.

1. The Excuses Start Early 

Before the window had even opened our beloved chairman was firing the warning shots, insisting that “we” wouldn’t spend recklessly and gamble on our financial security – basically a rehashed version of his summer warnings where Leeds United spent pretty much nothing.

This invariably leads to questions about the pointless £7m vanity project bolted on to the East Stand and finished in a lovely cream colour.

Pre-empting such a response, the chairman explained that banks won’t lend football clubs money in this economy to spend on luxuries (such as their core business – ie. a squad), but they will lend money to a man with a series of financial disasters under his belt to add value to a stadium of which no one knows the owners – prudent business there from the banks, aren’t you glad we bailed them out?

“Yes Mr Bates, what can we do for you today?”

“I’d like a £7m loan to build an extension onto the stadium I lease”

“Hmmm… Any financial troubles in the past Mr. Bates?”

“Well, in the interests of full disclosure…” unlikely, I know “…there was a small matter of an Irish savers bank that may have gone bust after I loaned all their cash to some shady businessmen… oh, and there was a couple of financial glitches when I owned Chelsea, but some Russian gangster bailed me out there… does an administration with Leeds count? Because, in my defence, I totally screwed the system there and managed to con my way back in debt free…”

2. Wage Budgets 

It doesn’t matter that your chairman won’t splash the cash for players when you have an ‘extremely competitive wage budget’ that your manager can do what he likes with – except we haven’t, and he most certainly cannot.

A quick flick through the accounts of Championship teams should be enough to end this fallacy once and for all. In reality, Leeds’ wage budget is distinctly average – neither relegation or promotion worthy, kind of in the middle. You know, mid-tableish.

There’s an old saying that ‘you get what you pay for’ and that’s generally true of football. Ken Bates isn’t lying when he says “money doesn’t guarantee success” but he’s papering over the fact it’s impossible without it.

When was the last time Everton won the Premier League I ask you?

No one takes the top flight title without considerable investment and the same is true of the Championship – money does not guarantee success, but spending nothing at all guarantees the Championship trophy won’t be paraded in front of your fans come May – unless of course, a team that did invest happens to be your final game of the season. Then you get to look on enviously.

3. The Convincer

While we’re putting an end to fallacies, let’s address the notion that it is Grayson who picks the players and he alone who is responsible for the team we go to watch each week.

I know we’re all trying to forget it ever happened, but let’s circle back to summer 2011. Remember those joyful hours spent listening to the barely coherent ramblings of our chairman blasting the likes of Keith Andrews and Lee Bowyer for being unrealistically greedy? For demanding extortionate wages impossible for Championship clubs to meet?

Remember them both signing for the mighty Ipswich Town?

Perhaps Keith Andrews demands were too much – I’m in no position to dispute that – but wages are relative to the division and the quality of player you’re chasing. If you want the divisions best, then you better be prepared to compete with the other teams ready to cough up. Alternatively, you could slag them off in the press and settle for Michael Brown – depends on your aspirations I suppose…

This is just one example of Simon Grayson highlighting the player he wants before Shaun Harvey failed to negotiate a contract with them and Ken Bates subsequently slated them in his weekly address to the nation.

So yes, Simon Grayson does pick the players, but consider this – when Shaun Harvey has failed in negotiations because Ken Bates’ budget doesn’t stretch far enough, where do you go from there?

Well, you move from Keith Andrews to Lee Bowyer of course, and fail again. Somewhere in this failed search for a central midfielder was Alan Smith who decided he’d rather warm Newcastle United’s bench than take a paycut at Leeds. Further failure followed with attempts to sign Sammy Clingan and Nick Montgomery.

Five (probably more) down and by this point, the rest of the Championship have snapped up most of the quality leaving Simon Grayson desperate for a central midfield and only the runt of the litter remaining. Step forward Michael Brown.

Doesn’t strike you as a transfer policy that’s going to win you the league, does it?

4. B-b-but Ridsdale

Of course, no transfer window would be complete without a cursory nod to our former chairman, to whom Ken Bates owes a thousand and one thankyou cards for the numerous times he’s provided a perfect scapegoat when anyone dare question the owners ambition.

The excuse has worn thinner than Don Revie’s lucky suit. Two takeovers and an administration have passed since then and any remaining problems can not be attributed to him – nor can he be used as a go-to excuse every time someone dares to suggest we should be seeing some return on our investment.

It’s all very black and white when the Ridsdale excuses come in to play. There’s Ridsdale’s way of spending money and Ken Bates’ way of not spending anything at all. The grey area in the middle that many a team have secured promotion from is non-existent. Don’t even bother mentioning it, you’ll be blasted for your failure to understand football finances, morons.

I thought I had a handle on it once. My general understanding was that you had a total income (X) and an expenditure (Y) and that X minus Y equals Z, or available funds in this case. Turns out, I was in the right area, but I failed to mention Peter Ridsdale which, by all accounts, is the first rule of Leeds United finances.

For those of you as naive as I once was, the Peter Ridsdale rule means no matter how high the ticket prices, no matter how much you make from selling your star players and no matter how many money-spinning cup ties you have, available funds become zero – because of Ridsdale, naturally.

“But we do have funds, Simon Grayson spends them all on wages” I hear the posse of angry Bateswashed… I mean brainwashed… apologists scream. I refer you to point 2.

About six weeks or so ago I considered writing a piece about whether we should assume a point has passed where we’re never going to be back in the ‘big time’ again, and just accept some sort of joyous mediocrity – something like yo-yo club at best.

I even took the pains of contacting fans of our beloved Sheffield neighbours on the same subject, but as it turns out they hadn’t abandoned dreams of the top at all. All in all, it seemed like I was ploughing a silly little lone furrow of resigned negativity. Coincidentally, we were doing much worse then.

But recent events mean I’m coming back round again – I’m starting to think that maybe we should amicably give up on a return to the ‘EPL’, as it’s known to its prime marketing audiences.

Now, this is not because we’re not capable of making it there, oh no (the generally tosh nature of Championship opposition and the actually-not-that-badness of LUFC has been covered in Mangles previous), but because I’m coming round to the opinion that, much like guy who dumps his better-looking girlfriend just as she’s starting to feel she could do better, the Football League should turn the super league debate on its head by announcing its disaffiliation from the top tier.

I find agreeing with Shaun Harvey’s views and then taking them even further a hard thing to stomach or even compute, but it’s way past the point of fair comment to suggest that the Premier League are perhaps a bunch of overinflated despots plundering the greater mass of teams for the continued rude health of their own profit margins and egos. And yes, I’m more than prepared for the ‘bitter Leeds fan’ barrage from opposition trolls.

That no relegation thing was bad enough – but as totally believable as it was, it lacked Venky’s, I mean ‘foreign team owners’, actually coming out and nailing their w*nky colours to the mast.

It was the flagrant blackmail that led to the abolishment of the youth tribunal system last week that marked the point of no return. It’s as if the Premier League only just realised there was one quite fair rule still left in the statute book and felt impelled to clamp down on such unbridled freedoms.

The Championship is the fourth most-watched league in Europe. Secession by the Football League, whilst they have the likes of LUFC, the Sheffields, Forest, Leicester, Birmingham, West Ham et al on their books, and the Premier League has, well, a load of poorly-supported and/ or goal music-playing drudge-meisters on theirs, could be a cunning move.

Of course some of the above, perhaps even us, could be back in the ‘promised land’ by the time any such move could legally and structurally take effect – but there’d be plenty of sizeable sides still around. From a purely cynical ‘brand strength’ point of view they’d have a strong hand. F*** it, they should invite Celtic, Rangers, and a couple from Ireland along for the ride too.

But assuming we’d be part of the rebellion, what about the points deductions that our potential allies in rebellion gleefully dished out to us? No way we’re putting it all behind us, naturally. But what good league system doesn’t feature elements of rumbling bitterness?

Sky Sports would have you believe there were no good old-fashioned bad blood outside the opinion pool of Gary Neville – but there’s plenty of the soap opera angst everywhere. Sure, far more Football League outfits hate us than we ourselves can be bothered to hate, but that’s just life as we know it.

All we need to be united with the rest on is the view that with the Premier League sitting in the executioner’s position, sustaining a relationship with the hangman is just not healthy.

Yep, that’s right; a piece not so much about LUFC directly but the state of football in general – just putting it out there. You can begin vitriolic critique after just one more paragraph.

I would also concede that it’s almost certainly not actually going to happen. The desperate suckling of the League onto the ever-drying Premier League teat of prawn-scented sustenance will likely continue until it falls off, but I can’t help feeling we could be key players in a beautiful breakaway, if the men in charge would only show a little imagination.

Ahead of tonight’s BBC One Yorkshire documentary ‘Who Owns Leeds United,’ The Square Ball have published a series of emails sent between Shaun Harvey and Leeds City Council, in which the Leeds United CEO attempts to negotiate a loan for the repurchase of Elland Road.

The emails, which were obtained by the BBC under the Freedom Of Information Act, show council officials tirelessly attempting to help Leeds United avoid relegation and financial doom by coming to a mutual agreement for the repurchase of Elland Road. Leeds City Council is caught in an unenviable position of trying to protect one of their city’s greatest assets – a high profile sports club – and ensuring taxpayer’s money is spent wisely in these times of increased scrutiny and financial hardship.

Contrary to Ken Bates’ take on events, that the council didn’t care for the future of our club and showed no interest in helping us, the emails reveal an entirely different story. One in which, Leeds City Council attempted to overcome concerns of hidden ownerships, overvalued assets and unreasonable loan requests from the club to find an agreement that would not only support the long-term future of the club, but also provide value for money to the taxpayer.

Within the emails is an alarming claim from Shaun Harvey that the club had already agreed in principle a £10m investment that would be injected into the club – ensuring we avoided the subsequent administration – if the council (not the club!) agreed to several conditions set out by the mysterious investor.

These conditions were that;

• The council would loan Leeds United £18-25m at 4% interest – an incredibly low amount for a loan that would have stretched over 20 years.
• The council would give principle planning permission for additional (non football) facilities to be built on stadium land
• The council would give Leeds United first refusal on all LCC owned land around the stadium before selling to anyone else

It’s almost a little too convenient that the mysterious £10m investor would be interested in exactly the same things Ken Bates is. The principle planning permission and first refusal on additional land all seem to tie in nicely with the hotel and retail facilities our chairman has been planning to build for several years now.

Considering no other football club in the country believes Ken Bates’ non-matchday vision is a financially viable one – least of all the Chelsea executive who spoke of the small revenues Chelsea Village turns over – it’s difficult to imagine an investor willing to put in £10m so that Ken Bates can prove everybody wrong. A ridiculous number of clubs have been taken over by wealthy people in the past decade or so, yet none of them have highlighted a need for hotels and non-matchday events to build their coffers – not even after plans were announced to restrict clubs to wages based on their own income.

It almost seems as though Leeds United have attempted to use the clubs uncertain future as chips in a game of high stakes poker with the council. The council, worried that the city may lose a club which brings people, money and attention to the city, were left desperately trying to help the club, whilst at the same time, trying to uncover who it was their money was going to (fears of money laundering laws were mentioned at one point), whether their loan would be safely repaid and most importantly, whether the taxpayer was getting a fair deal.

You can read the emails yourself over at The Square Ball, but for me, the council have been backed into a corner by Leeds United who seemed to be using the council’s fear of losing a huge city asset as leverage. The council were left in an impossible position where they had no idea where their money would be going, whether they could rely on Leeds United to repay the huge loan they requested and where a mysterious investors demands were bordering on blackmail.

Yet through all this, the council continued to try and find a mutually suitable solution, only for Bates to later announce that ”revenge is a dish best eaten cold” claiming that the council had little interest in helping the club.

The BBC One Documentary “Who Owns Leeds United?” will be screened tonight at 19:30 for viewers in the Yorkshire region and available on iPlayer thereafter. Sky viewers across the country can also see it live on channel 976. 

A modern adaptation of the classic Hindu sex manual, The Leeds United Kama Sutra is packed full of “slow arousal” techniques.

With the experience and wisdom of Ken Bates, The Leeds United Kama Sutra can also provide you with “plenty of foreplay” ideas to ensure you’re royally screwed each and every time you visit Elland Road.

The Leeds United Kama Sutra will be available exclusively from the giant hole in the side of the East Stand and comes fully laminated to ensure lasting pleasure.

Sorry, it was a slow news day… 

When Shaun Harvey was elected to the board of the Football League, I couldn’t help but think it was the most ridiculous move since they named a physicist by the name of Mahwinney as Chairman.

Following administration in 2007 Leeds were unable to obtain the CVA required by the Football League to regain our league share so the Football League – chaired by Mahwinney at the time – decided we could exit administration but an additional punishment was to be voted on by our rivals.

Quite how he expected them to vote without bias was anyone’s guess? Many suspect that was the entire point; that he was so bitter about Ken Bates cleverly dodging the consequences of entering administration (by doing so when it wouldn’t effect how we finished the season), that he needed a way to get revenge whilst also distancing himself from it by having other clubs make the final call.

It may be deadlocked at Ken Bates 1-1 The Football League, but the Leeds United chairman isn’t the kind of guy who forgives and forgets what he and most Whites fans saw as a major injustice.

Whilst Shaun Harvey may be the one sat in the chair at the Football League, it would be foolish for anyone to think he isn’t pushing Bates’ agenda. For us, that’s probably a good thing – after all, if Leeds United prosper, then so too do Bates and Harvey. For all those teams and chairman that voted us against us however, the slightest chance to exact our revenge and you can bet your house that Bates will be instructing Harvey to take it. Quite right too. I don’t mean to sound bitter, but I am, so that’s how it comes across.

OK, so it’s not the greatest way to make friends I grant you, but Leeds United and Ken Bates share one common theme in that they are universally disliked and have few friends in the world of football to lose – far too late to change that now.

The first act of revenge should be taken out on Peter Ridsdale by blocking his plans to takeover Plymouth Argyle. Back in 2007, Ridsdale was busy trying to make amends for destroying Leeds United by ruining Cardiff City and whilst I sincerely doubt he was one of those that voted for Leeds to have additional points deducted, his comments that ‘seeing Leeds United in the third tier was deeply saddening’, but he felt ‘in no way responsible’ for that outcome still grates on me a little… well, a lot actually. The level of self-delusion this man exhibits is astonishing.

For those bygone-be-bygone types reading this who aren’t big on the whole revenge thing, maybe you could support a block of his takeover not to p**s him off, but to stop him ruining yet another football club with his wild narcissistic fantasies. Whatever helps you sleep better at night.

For those that missed it, Shaun Harvey shot to Leeds United’s defence live on TalkSport radio yesterday after one of the presenters accused The Whites of arrogance for making play-off arrangements before our place was confirmed.

Those of you that experienced the farcical organisation of the club last time play-off tickets went on sale will have no doubt been relieved to hear Leeds United had learnt from that mistake and weren’t chancing a rerun of the inhumane treatment fans were subjected to.

Leeds United’s decision to make play-off arrangements early could easily be spun into one of two news stories. You could take the TalkSport approach and twist it into some kind of unhatched chicken counting game, or you could see it for what it is – practical future planning. Something all successful businesses do.

Our history has taught us to be cautious and take nothing for granted. Leeds United have a tendency to blow things at the last second or make things infinitely harder than it should be – that’s the Leeds United way and something we all have to deal with. It is not however an excuse for the club to be unprepared. To not plan for all eventualities, whether they be play-off success or failing to reach the Champions League places would be incredibly naive of any football club.

As things stand, Leeds United sit fifth in the Championship. As usual, we’re doing things the hardest way possible and dropping points to inferior clubs that are littered with suspensions and injuries to key players. But despite the same old ups and downs, we’ve maintained a play-off spot for most of the season now and look likely to finish there when you consider the respective run-ins of our play-off chasing rivals.

The fact is, that whether we make it or not, planning does no harm whatsoever. Jennifer Morrison might never make her way to Leeds having heard about the free pass my better half gave me and seduce me into a night of X rated activities, but that doesn’t mean my brain hasn’t planned for that possibility. Why wouldn’t it? I don’t want to be a jittering mess if she does come to surprise me!

The thing that really surprised me about this story is that it wasn’t a pre-scheduled interview with TalkSport, but an impromptu phone call from Harvey who had demanded a chance to set the record straight after hearing the remarks a couple of days previous. This is a man I’ve given very little (if any) credit to in the past, so you know he’s done good when you hear me singing his praises.

Essentially, what we have here is a story that wouldn’t have made it beyond the official site of any other club, but because we’re Leeds United, it’s easy to portray us as the villains. All you need to do is twist it in whatever direction creates a little buzz amongst right wing London taxi drivers who love nothing more than scandal and poor stereotyping and you’re on to a winner.

A cheap shot from TalkSport, and they know it. Credit to Harvey for setting the record straight.