Ten per cent

Memo to Angus Kinnear: Inspiration for missing programme notes

Written by: Rob Conlon
Artwork by: Eamonn Dalton
A collage of photos of the inside of Elland Road, minus the stains

A couple of pages seemed to be missing from Leeds United’s matchday programme for Saturday’s 2-2 draw with Brighton. Even though he wasn’t able to play due to injury, club captain Liam Cooper provided his column; Javi Gracia took time to write his during a busy week preparing his players for an important fixture when Leeds desperately need results. Angus Kinnear usually does the same but, despite Leeds having no midweek fixture that would have made deadlines tight, he decided to skip this particular issue.

Appearing on The Square Ball podcast ahead of the start of the season, Kinnear said he prides himself on being one of the few chief executives in the Premier League who writes their own programme notes, because, “I actually thought it was quite a good platform to have a regular dialogue with supporters and tell them what’s going on.” Kinnear said it can often be a boring task — sometimes there’s not a lot going on to write about — but after a week in which Leeds announced season ticket prices were being raised by 10 per cent, there was an obvious topic raising plenty of questions fans want answering. Mainly, what does the club need that extra 10 per cent to pay for?

In the press release announcing the rise in price, nobody on Leeds’ board provided quotes explaining why fans were being charged more. The following paragraph was the closest we got:

‘We appreciate that any increase in the current economic climate is unwelcome, particularly when it coincides with poor performance on the pitch. The decision has not been taken lightly but we believe the new pricing is consistent with both our principle of running the clubs (sic) finances responsibly and maintaining our commitment to affordable football at Elland Road.’

I’m not sure how making season tickets more expensive is ‘maintaining our commitment to affordable football at Elland Road’. And I’m not sure about the assertion Leeds are ‘running the club’s finances responsibly’ when the board themselves are telling us otherwise. Last season, Kinnear responded to proposals to redistribute more of the Premier League’s revenues down the Football League pyramid (which his boss Andrea Radrizzani called for when Leeds were in the Championship) by comparing such plans to ‘Maoist collective agriculturalism’. In those same programme notes, he explained why giving Leeds more money in the Championship would have been a terrible idea: because the ownership would only have wasted it:

‘Teams further down the pyramid do not need their means artificially inflated, they need to live within them. As a recently promoted team we were asked by the review what we would have done with increased funds if Premier League teams had been forced to financially contribute to our promotion campaign and the answer (although more eloquently expressed) was, fundamentally, that we would have still blown it on Pawel Cibicki.’

As Moxco wrote a month later, in a blog explaining why Cibicki was a particularly ill-timed punchline:

‘Kinnear can’t joke about blowing money on Cibicki when he’s the chief executive who signed off on paying £1.5m for him in the first place. It isn’t possible to whip the tie off, hop out of the director’s box and run over to start nudging the fans, pointing at the pitch and asking ‘wow, who blew all the money on that guy!?’, when the answer is you, you blew the money on him. Then you sold us tickets to watch him, you hired Paul Heckingbottom to coach him, and the team finished 13th. That’s why fans tell jokes, because if we didn’t, we’d cry. What were we supposed to be laughing at in Kinnear’s programme notes?’

More recently, Andrea Radrizzani has been cracking jokes about Leeds wasting money. Radz doesn’t write programme notes, but he does send tweets. It’s easier to delete them, you see. Last month the Twitter account Transfer News Live asked, ‘Who is the biggest transfer flop in your club’s history?’ Radz replied, ‘JKA’, referring to Jean-Kevin Augustin and the £18m Leeds owe RB Leipzig for Big Kev’s 48 minutes in a United shirt. Radz deleted the tweet half an hour later, trying out the different punchline, ‘JFK’. I don’t remember Leeds signing the 35th president of the United States, although given Victor Orta’s desperate trolley dash around the world after Rodrigo’s injury at the end of the summer transfer window, I wouldn’t put it past us.

Radz can often be a bit tired and emotional on Twitter, but his JKA gag was consistent with what he said in the more professional setting of an interview with DAZN at the end of February. When asked about the difference in finances between the Premier League and Serie A, Radz replied:

“The gap is huge, although in my opinion we throw money away. We pay too much for players and players’ contracts… We need to work on ideas and the whole Premier League is a bit flawed. [Clubs] use money because they have so much of it, but there is no real need for it.”

A week later, Leeds — playing in a league where there’s so much money clubs throw it away because they have no better idea what to do with it — raised their season ticket prices. The Leeds board have had three years of Premier League income, but they’re still talking about needing to improve the club’s infrastructure and stadium, while the team has got worse. Which returns us to the question: what is the extra 10 per cent — the second 10 per cent rise in consecutive seasons — paying for? And why is it falling on supporters to make up for all the money the board admit to squandering? A Twitter thread started by our Michael shows the extra cash has not been spent on improving the facilities at Elland Road for supporters:

A tweet of a photo of paper cups at Elland Road filled with 'water' that is yellowy brown — ie not the colour water should be. The caption reads:'This was the “hot” water yesterday . It was luke warm and the water was brown when it came out of the urn. Completely undrinkable !! Probably needs the Food standards agency dropping by to have a look @LUFC @andrearadri'
Tweet: @leedslegends
A tweet of a photo of a pie smashed against a wall, and the caption:'This pie was smashed into the wall for the entirety of last season. Never got cleaned off.'
Tweet: @CannoliGun — the pie has since been cleaned off the wall, sort of
A tweet of a photo of a toilet cubicle inside Elland Road. A ceiling tile has fallen down and is hovering over the toilet, attached to some piping
Tweet: @AndrwRchrdsn
A tweet of two photos of the inside of Elland Road: paint falling off the ceiling and a hand dryer with paint completely stripped off
Tweet: @LeedsOnTour
A tweet of the toilets inside Elland Road and the (fair) description:'Toilets looking like a world war 2 bunker'
Tweet: @JoeWainwright10
A tweet from Nathan Clark, owner of the Brudenell Social Club, with a photo of him fixing a boiler behind a dirty counter at Elland Road so they could get the hot water working, and the caption: 'Just to show an example…At the last home game (vs Southampton), the boiler wasn’t working, and I had to go behind the counter and help them fix / turn the water back on… But just look at the state of the counter and sink. This is South Stand upper Place is falling apart'
Tweet: @Nath_Brudenell
A tweet of a photo of a toilet at Elland Road with a broken seat on the floor next to it and piss all around the rim that is either frozen or has combined with adhesive where someone has tried to glue the seat back on
Tweet: @LUFC96Robbo — apparently it’s pissy glue, rather than frozen piss, if that makes it any better

The toilet seat covered in frozen piss is such a rare natural phenomenon Kinnear could use it as a topic for his next programme notes, if he’s still lacking inspiration. There are more than enough photos in the Twitter thread to pad out a few pages. Either that, or maybe he can write about why there’s still a t-shirt in the window of the East Stand offices displaying the message, ‘Football Is For The Fans’. ⬢

DON'T MISS ANYTHING FROM TSB

Pick your emails:
  • Support The Square Ball

    Get more from TSB+

    ⬢ Ad-free podcast
    ⬢ Extra episodes
    ⬢ The Match Ball Live video
    ⬢ Every digital magazine
    ⬢ Daily email and more
    ⬢ From £4.99 a month
    ⬢ Click here for one month free trial
tsb_podcast_2023_thumbnail
Poor Dan James
tsb_podcast_2023_thumbnail
If you wanna be the best
A photograph of Sarah Danby walking out of the tunnel for Leeds United Women with two mascots either side of her
Chicken and egg
tsb_guide_2023_web_thumbnail
Elephant Stampede
tsb_podcast_2023_thumbnail
Do you recall?
THE_MEMBERS_SHOW_38
TSB
Futebol
members_show_2023_web_thumbnail
TSB
Barmby
tsb_podcast_2023_thumbnail
Ooh I wanna take ya
240318_COC_5TH_ROUND
TSB
Knockout
members_show_2023_web_thumbnail
TSB
Limewire
PROP_240319
Wind It In
propaganda_podcast_2023_thumbnail
Flex
The Square Ball