Anbefaler de som stadig har betont at det ikke finnes kjøpere i kø for Leeds United om å lese dette.Kanskje en forklaring på at de fleste holder seg unna KB..?
If anyone wants to know why no one invests in #lufc, read this about Matthew Harding at Chelsea from The Times in 1995:
There are bears with sore heads and then there is Ken Bates recovering from pneumonia. Today, after weeks of well-publicised sniping from a distance, Bates entertains his would-be successor to the chair of Chelsea Football Club.
Matthew Harding, 41, will be attending a boardroom meeting at Stamford Bridge and facing an irate Bates for the first time since their relationship soured to the point that Bates banned Harding from the Chelsea directors' box and players' lounge.
It has kept him away from the ground where Harding has been flouting the ban by sidling past security guards to meet Glenn Hoddle, the team manager.
A big sloppy bear-hug from Bates is out of the question even if Harding does play down the antagonism. "I've not had a chance to talk much to Ken lately so I'm looking forward to seeing him on Thursday," he said.
If Chelsea are to pummel their way out of the cloud of mediocrity that has enveloped the club for the past 20 years then Bates, 63, will have to force himself to look forward to seeing Harding, who, as chairman of the Benfield Reinsurance Group, is worth more than #120m and appears to like nothing more than lavishing gifts on the club he has supported since he was eigh.
Since October 1993, when at Bates's invitation he joined the Chelsea board, Harding has spent #16.5m on the ground freehold, put #5m towards the new North Stand and added #3.5m to the pot for new players.
Now, however, Bates has said Harding is stingy and criticised him for failing to spell out how much more cash he will inject into the club.
Two incidents are at the root of the impasse. By purchasing the ground freehold outright in April, Harding effectively grabbed the "saviour" tag from under Bates's nose. Bates had saved Stamford Bridge from property developers but only on a short-term basis. Harding made sure of it.
Then, on November 2, Harding wrote to Bates stating that he wanted to resign from the board of Chelsea Village, the club's holding company. Harding insisted his reasons have to remain a private matter between him and Bates but his decision inevitably led to speculation as to how Chelsea Village is run.
Chelsea Village placed Chelsea Football and Athletic Club (CFAC) into receivership in 1993. Bates owns 29% of the Village but controls the remaining shares through an anonymous consortium. Bates jealously guards the identity of the members of his consortium. The holdings are based in off-shore companies in the British Virgin Islands, Hong Kong and Guernsey. Mystery breeds suspicion. There has been a newspaper report stating that a former arms dealer owns a sizeable chunk of the shares. People wonder why Bates is so secretive.
Chelsea Village is Bates's vehicle for turning Stamford Bridge into a leisure complex. On the agenda of the board meeting today are questions about whether that complex is being given a higher priority than the football team, at present eleventh in the FA Carling Premiership.
Specifically, Bates is being asked if Chelsea Village wants to place a ceiling on transfer fees, to sell players to finance the hotel, luxury apartments and leisure facilities and generally to control the football club's spending and wage structure.
The agenda of such meetings is not normally released and Harding stressed he was not the source of the leak. Indeed, Harding has conducted himself in exemplary fashion throughout the squabble. He has scored innumerable publicity points by laughing off his ban from the directors' box and by drinking with supporters before matches.
Having discovered an ardent Chelsea supporter was among Britain's leading 100 earners, Bates wooed Harding and the general understanding was that Harding was Chelsea's chairman-in-waiting.
Harding, it seems, is not keen to hang around too long, and with his intoxicating mixture of wealth and man-of-the-people attitude, has won over the Chelsea Independent Supporters' Association and most of the tabloid press.
He does not say he should replace Bates but speaks euphemistically. "I am not doing this for me. It is imperative Chelsea Football Club grasp what opportunities it gets with both hands," he said.
That opportunity is his money, but Harding's resignation from the Chelsea Village board underlined that the man who made his fortune from taking on other people's risks will not continue to underwrite the club unless Bates is more open about his plan and the nature of his consortium, or is willing to sell up. So far Bates has scoffed at such notions.
Bates cannot be ousted by popular demand, and estimates of what it would cost Harding to buy Bates out, if that is the route the present chairman chooses, have been put at #50m. A clash of egos on the pitch ruins the game, a clash of egos among directors can ruin a club. The boardroom meeting today needs to serve up some compromises.
