BUILD US A TEAM, NOT A HOTEL
Ken Bates often uses his programme notes to boast that he knows how to run a football club properly. As part of this tedious exercise in self-congratulation, he tells us that he always budgets to get knocked out of the cup in the first round, he does not include player sales, or play-off campaigns in his budgets. Fair enough, sounds sensible.
If that is the case, we have earned considerable incremental income over the last 2-3 years from (I conservatively estimate):
- the sale of Fabian Delph (£6m)
- sell-on for Kilgallon (£0.75m)
- sell-on for Milner (£2m)
- compensation for Wise & Poyet (£0.5m+)
- compensation for the "Chelsea kids" (£4.5m)
- compensation for Luke Garbutt from Everton (£0.75m+)
- several play-off campaigns (£1m+)
- cup income this season from Liverpool, scum and Tottenham ties (£1.5m+)
He has also made good progress in terms of reducing the wage bill, trimming the squad of some high earners eg Richardson, Douglas, Prutton, Showumni, and several more.
Leeds United made an operating profit of £800k last year, which does not include player sales etc, so we are trading at a profit. In terms of average crowds, Leeds are also exceeding the oft quoted "break-even" figure of 22,000 every season. All in all, a rosy picture financially. So credit to Kenneth for that.
In the face of all this good news, I still have a problem; I don't understand where all this additional revenue goes. It was not spent on buying back Thorp Arch, in an embarrassing fiasco, and it certainly has not been spent on transfer fees for new players. I am in no way suggesting any wrongdoing by the current board. But, as the team are stuttering in their worst run for over a year and are in desperate need of some extra quality, we are scrabbling around the bottom of the barrel signing a 37 year old never has been who has has just been released by Leicester.
So tell me, where has all this extra money gone?