Denne 'eposten til Bates' er lang, men du verden, den er verdt å lese. Ikke se på det som et forsøk på å 'nå' Bates, det er ren indremedisin, og vi trenger det.
Den er skrevet av 'monkeyspank' på waccoe.
Ok, this is the email I sent...just a few tweaks (highlighted) from the one I posted earlier:
Dear Sir/Madam
Please could you make sure that Ken Bates sees this email:
Mr Bates
I am sick and tired of you and the way you run this club. You have been an utter failure, almost from the very beginning when you “saved usâ€. That was over seven years ago…we were a mid-table Championship club then and WE STILL ARE! In the intervening years you have:
1) Taken us from Championship play-off final to relegation in ONE season.
2) Failed financially to keep the biggest club in the Championship (some would say one of the biggest in England) afloat such that you had to take us into administration…and this was despite having Premier league size home attendances and charging Premier league level prices. What was it you said? “If you want Premier league football you have to pay Premier league pricesâ€â€¦well we paid Premier league prices…BUT ENDED UP WITH THIRD TIER FOOTBALL?!? And don’t be telling us it was all Ridsdale’s fault…he had long gone by then, and at least he gave us Champions league football whilst he was messing things up, you gave us Yeovil, Histon and the JPT - and you couldn't even get us into the final of that!. No IT WAS YOUR FAULT KEN…ANOTHER LITTLE BUSINESS FAILURE TO ADD TO YOUR LIST.
3) Despite being a very big fish in a very small pond, with home crowds that were tens of thousands higher than most other clubs in the First division and an income level that would have run half a dozen first division teams easily, YOU took THREE season’s to get us back to where you found us. Yes it would have been sooner…if you hadn’t made a mess of going into, or rather out of administration, saddling us with a 15 point penalty. Once again another fantastic bit of business acumen from the World’s greatest football chairman.
4) In our first season back in the Championship, with things going well and even a top two spot a possibility you, once again, chose to spend OUR money on restaurants and pavilions instead of players and so, once again, we fell away, missing the best chance we had of promotion back to the Premiership since that Play-off final against Watford. Another shrewd bit of business.
5) Your next really clever move was to make improvements to our East stand, the newest and best stand we had anyway…building executive boxes you can’t fill and tarting up the front of the stand so that it now resembles some sort or cheap and nasty detached house in the poorest part of town. Still, at least you didn’t have the cheek to use our money this time…no, this time you borrowed the money because you couldn’t afford to do it yourself could you. But that’s ok, you just mortgage OUR season ticket sales for a couple of years…eventually the fans will always pay for YOUR business failures.
6) And what about last season? Well, your business acumen told you to sell our best player during the Summer, right at the end of the transfer window…very clever…and then with the team struggling to even make a play-off spot we reach the January transfer window and what do you do? Well many/most chairman might think that perhaps the squad should be strengthened, buy a couple of quality players to tighten up the defence, maybe a strong midfielder to give us some extra bite. Maybe a couple of class signings will excite the Leeds fans, maybe bring a few back to Elland Road to bolster the crowd…get back some of the five thousand or so customers you’ve lost since you took over. But what does clever Mr Ken Bates do? Well it’s obvious isn’t it, the solution to the problem is......SELL THE CLUB CAPTAIN! I mean really, you couldn’t make it up could you? My God even the simplest of chairman would see the stupidity of what you did. But not you Mr Bates, you are never wrong are you? You just trot out the same old tired excuses, the tired excuses of a tired old man. Blame aggressive agents…do agents scare you Mr Bates? Can’t you handle them nasty old agents any more?
You know I could go on…I could talk about the hundreds of thousands (if not millions) you have cost the club defending legal cases brought about by your inability to think before you talk or put pen to paper. Or perhaps we could talk about the players you have allowed to walk away from the club for free because you couldn’t tie them down to a longer contract. Maybe we should talk about the money for Fabien Delph that was going to buy back Thorpe Arch, but somehow didn’t. Perhaps you could explain to me why it is so important for you to “know who the proposed investors are†when you yourself didn’t know who owned Leeds United for six years...yes, the club that YOU are chairman of and yet YOU didn't know who your own bosses were...I would laugh if it wasn't for the tears streaming down my face. On the subject of takeovers…it seems you have had people queuing up to buy us for months just waiting to give you millions for your shareholding, and you STILL can’t figure out how to get the deal done.
Let’s face it Mr Bates…you really are quite rubbish at being a football chairman aren’t you?
I AM A Leeds fan of 40 years and counting, supporting this club home and away. Buying every shirt for myself and my son every season. But not any more…I shall not return to Elland Road again, and shall not buy one more shirt or any other item, until YOU AND YOUR WIFE have gone. I’m sick and tired of looking at the fancy executive box you have built for yourself and seeing two old has-beens sitting there waiting for their next hot Bovril to arrive. And talking about your box, or is it throne room, you couldn’t even get that right could you – perhaps you should re-classify your box as “Restricted View†and drop the price on it!
One last point Ken: Everybody knows what happened at Leeds United under Peter Ridsdale’s stewardship. Peter’s now famous, or rather infamous, statement “We lived the dream†seems almost chilling now with the benefit of hindsight. But what a dream it was…Champions League semi final, UEFA Cup semi final, top five Premiership finishes. But we paid that price Ken, we have paid for it many times over. But you know what Ken, I would rather have Peter Ridsdale’s dream than the KEN BATES NIGHTMARE that we have had to endure this last seven and a half years. Watching YOU slowly strangle the life out of the club I have loved as a man and boy for forty years is far worse than anything Peter Ridsdale did…at least with him it wasn’t a slow, lingering death.
SO I ASK YOU, PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD JUST GO KEN. LEAVE THIS CLUB, LEAVE IT TO SOMEONE WHO ACTUALLY KNOWS WHAT THEY ARE DOING, HAS THE FINANCIAL CLOUT TO COPE WITH MODERN DAY FOOTBALL…AND THE MENTAL STRENGTH TO COPE WITH THOSE NASTY AGENTS THAT SEEM TO SCARE YOU SO MUCH.
I’ve had enough…I have better things to do than write emails to an old man who doesn’t even know what an email is anyway.
Go Ken, just go.
Mike
P.S. I am not going to give you any personal details at this stage because I simply don’t trust you with them. But if you would like to discuss any of what I have said further you only need to respond to this email. If you would like to discuss in person then let me know and I would be happy to arrange a time and place to meet. BUT NOT MONACO...I'VE BEEN TOLD THEY DON’T LIKE MORONS AND IDIOTS THERE.
