Leeds United accounts

[gazurtoids]

one thing i dont get about the boxes/meeting rooms and why we are doing them is now with the in the current climate most business mine included are cutting down on this type of expenditure using web based meeting tools to avoid wasting money, so although ken wants us to be a 365 days a year company is it ever realistic

I'd never really thought of this angle before, but it's definitely happening at my place. Skype, facetime, google documents - all free and all taking away from face to face meetings.

Not that Ken knows what any of those things are. Pen and paper, radio stations and expensive programmes. Never mind that internet stuff - bloody load of mumbo-jumbo.

For replacing meetings? Sure. But not for replacing conferences. This is the sector that the pavilion & the hotel are aimed at and they're not being replaced by skype.

[Fax Man]

Don't be conned into thinking we're a safe, stable business. We're anything but that. Bates is literally begging people for money at the moment. And I don't mean 'literally' in the Jamie Redknapp sense.

[Mr Reality]

one thing i dont get about the boxes/meeting rooms and why we are doing them is now with the in the current climate most business mine included are cutting down on this type of expenditure using web based meeting tools to avoid wasting money, so although ken wants us to be a 365 days a year company is it ever realistic

I'd never really thought of this angle before, but it's definitely happening at my place. Skype, facetime, google documents - all free and all taking away from face to face meetings.

Not that Ken knows what any of those things are. Pen and paper, radio stations and expensive programmes. Never mind that internet stuff - bloody load of mumbo-jumbo.

I know i got my job just as the reccesion kicked in to over drive 2008 after uni and basically its now pretty impossible to have any meeting outside the office everything is done online, can be a pain but it beats not having a job

[jackos]

As for the spending money on the playing side of things: I whole heartedly agree with you and this is the fine line I'm talking about. I'm pretty sure most people would be happy to let him busy away building a hotel if the team was seeing some of the money but, quite simply, it isn't!

It's not a fine line at all, its the fucking grand canyon, we have made a profit of ~10 million quid in the transfer market over the last 3 seasons - money Bates has continually said will be reinvested in the squad. He's a lying cunt how thinks football fans are idiots with only one use, that is to fund his little games n playboy lifestyle. He has done NOTHING good for our club at all. He has done nothing for football. He has spent his life living of it like a parasite. End of.

[Mr Reality]

one thing i dont get about the boxes/meeting rooms and why we are doing them is now with the in the current climate most business mine included are cutting down on this type of expenditure using web based meeting tools to avoid wasting money, so although ken wants us to be a 365 days a year company is it ever realistic

I'd never really thought of this angle before, but it's definitely happening at my place. Skype, facetime, google documents - all free and all taking away from face to face meetings.

Not that Ken knows what any of those things are. Pen and paper, radio stations and expensive programmes. Never mind that internet stuff - bloody load of mumbo-jumbo.

For replacing meetings? Sure. But not for replacing conferences. This is the sector that the pavilion & the hotel are aimed at and they're not being replaced by skype.

yes but how many conferences will the pavillion hold a year, i agree the pavillion is good addition, not sure why its a seperate business etc but the basic idea of the pavillion i agree with, not very expensive to constrcution costs(i am a civil/structural engineer)

and if you have the pavillion why do you need the hotel, i dont see the reasoning for this

[Mr Reality]

I'm staggered, absolutely fucking staggered, that after everything Bates has done and continues to do with our football club, that anyone can see even a small reason for optimism. Off the top of my head:

- Relegation to League One, the lowest point in our history
- The admin and completely dodgy way in which he reacquired the club
- Subsequently lying to us about who actually owned the club
- Covering the east stand in shit we don't need or want at great expense, mortgaging future season ticket sales to pay for it
- the 6th highest season ticket prices in the country
- Slagging off all and sundry and generally being an insufferable cunt
- Instead of making money from selling the radio rights, founding a club radio station that bleeds the club of money and who's output is fucking awful
- Paying the players fuck all, so they bugger off to the footballing hotbeds of Bristol and St Etienne, pocketing the fees received for them
- Spending fuck all on replacements

I could go on, you all know this, yet we get talk that he's not far from being a success?

Please don't implode with rage, and please believe me when I say that I can't stand Ken Bates, but I just genuinely don't think the issue is so black and white.

Okay, so he's a crooked cunt and dealt with the admin, acquisition and ownership issues in a very dodgy way. Despite the way in which he went about them though the club seems to be in a better place as a result of them (particularly the admin). I don't think him being a twat would stop him being successful.

The east stand issue depends on whether you believe it will actually generate us some money in years to come.

As for the spending money on the playing side of things: I whole heartedly agree with you and this is the fine line I'm talking about. I'm pretty sure most people would be happy to let him busy away building a hotel if the team was seeing some of the money but, quite simply, it isn't!

understanding what it takes to be a successful football club is what stops ken being succesful.

my personal belief is that all the boxes and plans for a hotel are to gurantee he can make money from the club if and when he sells, and also to leave a legacy that he basically pissed all over us used our money to build all this shit and he is reaping the benefits

[Vausey]

As for the spending money on the playing side of things: I whole heartedly agree with you and this is the fine line I'm talking about. I'm pretty sure most people would be happy to let him busy away building a hotel if the team was seeing some of the money but, quite simply, it isn't!

It's not a fine line at all, its the fucking grand canyon, we have made a profit of ~10 million quid in the transfer market over the last 3 seasons - money Bates has continually said will be reinvested in the squad. He's a lying cunt how thinks football fans are idiots with only one use, that is to fund his little games n playboy lifestyle. He has done NOTHING good for our club at all. He has done nothing for football. He has spent his life living of it like a parasite. End of.

It's a grand canyon in terms of the actual amount of money that needs to be spent on the squad but in terms of Bates' attitude it's a fine line. If he suddenly decided that we could afford to spend just an extra 10% of our revenue on the playing squad then that would make a huge difference - hence it's a fine line.

You can't honestly believe he's done nothing for the football club? That's an absurd statement. We were haemorrhaging money left, right and centre when he arrived. No matter how he's done it, whether it be dodgy dealings or whatever, he's steadied the ship at the very least (admittedly with our money!).

[BC]

Don't be conned into thinking we're a safe, stable business. We're anything but that. Bates is literally begging people for money at the moment. And I don't mean 'literally' in the Jamie Redknapp sense.

I've read the SR article and it still doesn't explain where the fuck all the money goes. We've borrowed to build all Bates' vanity shite around the stadium. We're certainly not spending it on wages or transfer fees (we must have a massive transfer profit since admin) yet we barely scrape profits. Fucking How? Are lawyers that expensive? How can we not be stable?

Some things that pissed me off on the article:

We won't negotiate with our own talented players (we could've extended the contracts of Gradel, Howson, BJ etc while paying them less than they're on now at their new clubs if we'd made a fair offer at a sensible time) but saw sense to raise postman Shaun's wage in this time. Good stuff.

Our strong revenue areas (commercial + matchday) are in decline and can't be reversed. We're going to get down to the bare bones on matchdays people who go on saturdays because what else would they do. We've lost everyone else and barrier to enter is so high that the future support of our club is fucked. Frankly the prices and the contempt with which we are treated has put people right off. This cannot easily be reversed.

It highlights just how dumb bates is we have a better base to be promoted than anyone else in the league yet we squander it. He fritters cash on nonsense while promotion would benefit the club manyfold over all his shite. He wouldn't even really have to gamble to achieve it. Proves to me Bates isn't in this for the cash - his legacy at Chelsea was trashed and the stubborn cunt wants to be proved right. Makes him v. dangerous imo - he'll never change never admit culpability and probably doesn't want to sell. The future is grim.

[moscowhite]

You can't honestly believe he's done nothing for the football club? That's an absurd statement. We were haemorrhaging money left, right and centre when he arrived. No matter how he's done it, whether it be dodgy dealings or whatever, he's steadied the ship at the very least (admittedly with our money!).

This is an incredibly generous reading of the period between Bates' takeover and administration/relegation. You really think the admin process was a "steadying of the ship," all done for the good of LUFC?

[Vausey]

I'm staggered, absolutely fucking staggered, that after everything Bates has done and continues to do with our football club, that anyone can see even a small reason for optimism. Off the top of my head:

- Relegation to League One, the lowest point in our history
- The admin and completely dodgy way in which he reacquired the club
- Subsequently lying to us about who actually owned the club
- Covering the east stand in shit we don't need or want at great expense, mortgaging future season ticket sales to pay for it
- the 6th highest season ticket prices in the country
- Slagging off all and sundry and generally being an insufferable cunt
- Instead of making money from selling the radio rights, founding a club radio station that bleeds the club of money and who's output is fucking awful
- Paying the players fuck all, so they bugger off to the footballing hotbeds of Bristol and St Etienne, pocketing the fees received for them
- Spending fuck all on replacements

I could go on, you all know this, yet we get talk that he's not far from being a success?

Please don't implode with rage, and please believe me when I say that I can't stand Ken Bates, but I just genuinely don't think the issue is so black and white.

Okay, so he's a crooked cunt and dealt with the admin, acquisition and ownership issues in a very dodgy way. Despite the way in which he went about them though the club seems to be in a better place as a result of them (particularly the admin). I don't think him being a twat would stop him being successful.

The east stand issue depends on whether you believe it will actually generate us some money in years to come.

As for the spending money on the playing side of things: I whole heartedly agree with you and this is the fine line I'm talking about. I'm pretty sure most people would be happy to let him busy away building a hotel if the team was seeing some of the money but, quite simply, it isn't!

understanding what it takes to be a successful football club is what stops ken being succesful.

my personal belief is that all the boxes and plans for a hotel are to gurantee he can make money from the club if and when he sells, and also to leave a legacy that he basically pissed all over us used our money to build all this shit and he is reaping the benefits

I always come back to this point that I just cannot fathom: what is his motivation? Does he have any children? He's a bit old to be doing all this shit for no reason, isn't he?

[Vausey]

You can't honestly believe he's done nothing for the football club? That's an absurd statement. We were haemorrhaging money left, right and centre when he arrived. No matter how he's done it, whether it be dodgy dealings or whatever, he's steadied the ship at the very least (admittedly with our money!).

This is an incredibly generous reading of the period between Bates' takeover and administration/relegation. You really think the admin process was a "steadying of the ship," all done for the good of LUFC?

No... but was the ship steadied regardless? Yes. Then it is impossible to say he hasn't done anything good for the club.

[BC]

Lots of ire directed at Bates seems to be based on him being some sort of malevolent genius. Cleverly manipulating us to his own ends. I think the man is a fucking idiot. Too stubborn and proud to see his own failings and determined to be proved right.

[moscowhite]

I always come back to this point that I just cannot fathom: what is his motivation? Does he have any children? He's a bit old to be doing all this shit for no reason, isn't he?

Five by his first wife - three girls and two boys. Robert Bates was vice-chairman at Chelsea in the eighties, until he crashed his car drunk on the motorway after an argument with his wife. I read an interview with Robert from the nineties, and at that point he and his father weren't speaking. Let's just say that young Bobby Bates - he's 55 - has 'daddy issues.'

[Disco Dan]

I always come back to this point that I just cannot fathom: what is his motivation? Does he have any children? He's a bit old to be doing all this shit for no reason, isn't he?

The choice is:

- Do what he has always done and talk bollocks to a captive audience in football, while trying to prove that his deeply flawed property development strategy is correct
- Be ignored in sunny Monaco and quietly count down the days until he dies

I'd wager he's doing it because he's fearful of the alternative. He's a narcissist too.

[Fax Man]

I always come back to this point that I just cannot fathom: what is his motivation? Does he have any children? He's a bit old to be doing all this shit for no reason, isn't he?

It's a great question and something I've thought a lot about before. This (that I wrote for Sabotage Times a few months ago) is the best theory I came up with...

The debate of why Ken Bates ‘bought’ Leeds United in 2005 is one that has been done to death and the only Bates himself can know the genuine reasons. There are plenty of theories on this and David’s version that Bates is doing it as a ‘football challenge’ along with the obvious profits is just one. As David says, there are easier ways to make lots of money. Unfortunately, in 50-odd years of business, Ken Bates hasn’t found one that places him amongst the super-rich – a place he’s craved since his time in the British Virgin Islands, although that’s another story altogether. Because he has never made it to the levels of the super-rich, he’s found a way to get the publicity he craves while making ample amounts of cash. That’s being the owner and chairman of a football club. He could obviously make the money through football without the publicity. There are plenty of people who do it – Stan Kreonke at Arsenal very rarely even gives an interview. But Ken is different, he wants to be centre stage, he craves the publicity. The fact I’m writing this now and you’re reading it means he’s getting just that. When he sold Chelsea, he made it clear he was considering retiring but that never happened. So did he come to Leeds to make money? He had just made £17million-plus from selling Chelsea – aged 70. He had plenty to live on for the rest of his life. So what motivated him to ‘buy’ Leeds? Taking failing companies and attempting to turn them around is something he’s done all his life – to differing degrees of success. Maybe he saw a chance to make more money, although I don’t think this is priority. Maybe he saw a chance to build another Chelsea Village? He did say on his first day: “They have more land up here so I could create Elland City rather than Chelsea Village.” It could have been money, it could have been property, it could have been his business drive. Was it football? The last seven years suggests not. Three years in League One and a relatively small budget for the size of the club and overall spending power are all arguments against this. That’s not to say he doesn’t enjoy the football side of it, but it is more of a minor thing in the grand scheme of things. As Bates himself says: “In my view a football club is a property business that hosts a football match 25 days a year and is shut for the other 340 days.” I could go on, but football doesn’t seem like Bates’ real motivation just a conduit for him to carry out his real passions; construction and himself. Regarding his ego, take this piece on Bates at Chelsea about him deceiving people for his own personal gain…- it sums him up perfectly. He loves the attention. Just listen to his weekly radio interviews on the radio station he owns and his programme column that serves to be another tool in which draw attention. So what motivated Bates to come to Leeds… Football? Not really. Money? To an extent. Property? Probably. Ego? Definitely.

There's also another theory, which could be added to the above, that Bates is basically an alcoholic and if he wasn't running Leeds United, he'd be drinking himself into an early grave. Susannah tries to keep him busy with stuff like doing Yorkshire Radio interviews just so he doesn't have as much time to get pissed.

[moscowhite]

No... but was the ship steadied regardless? Yes. Then it is impossible to say he hasn't done anything good for the club.

Admin was largely brought about by a mysterious £17m debt that appeared a couple of months beforehand, owed to a company who would then only allow LUFC to avoid liquidation if the man they had loaned that money to and who had subsequently lost it all (on what?) kept control.

Admin wasn't fucking good for the club. Never owing £17m to Astor would have been good for the club.

[Disco Dan]

There's also another theory, which could be added to the above, that Bates is basically an alcoholic and if he wasn't running Leeds United, he'd be drinking himself into an early grave. Susannah tries to keep him busy with stuff like doing Yorkshire Radio interviews just so he doesn't have as much time to get pissed.

This is an interesting point. There's plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest that Bates is not a well man. I wonder if it's his liver that's packing up? I mean, he cuts a mean Henry VIII figure, with his beard and belly and his proclivity for the finer things in life - Pouilly Fume, beef wellington, etc.

[gazurtoids]

yes but how many conferences will the pavillion hold a year, i agree the pavillion is good addition, not sure why its a seperate business etc but the basic idea of the pavillion i agree with, not very expensive to constrcution costs(i am a civil/structural engineer)

and if you have the pavillion why do you need the hotel, i dont see the reasoning for this

For multi-day conferences. I have no idea if the market for this is big enough for it to be a good idea, I'm just pointing out that skype isn't a problem for this part of the "business".

[Mustafaster]

Don't be conned into thinking we're a safe, stable business. We're anything but that. Bates is literally begging people for money at the moment. And I don't mean 'literally' in the Jamie Redknapp sense.

This is also my reading of the situation.
There is (or up to recently has been) a massive cash flow problem at the club.
It may be nominally profitable on one set of creative accounts, but the balance sheet is lousy. If the club were profitable or had a decent balance sheet it would be able to raise loans for investment at commercial rates. It can't. It has to rely on mortgaging future income and raising share capital at silly rates.
I just don't believe that the club is genuinely profitable. That is why we are now a selling club. If it were profitable I think Bates would actually spend some money (not a lot, but some) on the playing side, he isn't spending on players 'cos the club is not profitable.
All the signs point to a business that is not really profitable, has growing fixed overheads and a lousy balance sheet.

[thechubbyone]

yes but how many conferences will the pavillion hold a year, i agree the pavillion is good addition, not sure why its a seperate business etc but the basic idea of the pavillion i agree with, not very expensive to constrcution costs(i am a civil/structural engineer)

and if you have the pavillion why do you need the hotel, i dont see the reasoning for this

For multi-day conferences. I have no idea if the market for this is big enough for it to be a good idea, I'm just pointing out that skype isn't a problem for this part of the "business".

I believe exec boxes are let individually for smaller meetings etc.