Ja man kan ikke bli annet en imponert over at denne dealen kollapset
http://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/leedsunited/Leeds-United-What-does-future.5758955.jp?Leeds United: What does future hold after Thorp Arch deal's collapse? - Hay
Published Date: 23 October 2009
Part of the difficulty in convincing people that global warming is a matter of palpable concern is the suspicion that the issue might ultimately be someone else's problem.
That predicted crisis, in simple terms, is likely to affect most seriously a future generation while presently bothering only those who believe they can see the bigger picture.
In the context of Leeds United, Thorp Arch is no different.
The club's training ground is not a factor that will impinge on their immediate potential but it is blinkered in the extreme to ignore the implications of the aborted attempt to return ownership of the facility to United, via Leeds City Council.
In the event that Leeds failed to repurchase the property before last week's deadline, there was never going to be more than one consolation – the 25-year lease agreed on Thorp Arch when it was sold in 2004.
The only scenario worse than allowing the buy-back option to elapse was the thought of Leeds being told to vacate the complex within days or weeks of the deadline expiring.
A rental agreement running until 2029 was the fallback for a club who could argue on that basis that losing the freehold to Thorp Arch is not the end of the world.
In truth, they are in no position to make such a claim.
It is, still, important to distinguish between the overnight consequences of Leeds City Council's unsuccessful plan to exercise United's buy-back clause and the reality of what that failure might mean as the club's lease winds down.
To suggest that the short-term success of the club is intrinsically dependent on owning Thorp Arch is disingenuous.
United's squad trained there before the council's proposal collapsed and did so 24 hours later. Their academy remains intact. The threat was never one of instant chaos.
As League One stands, the club are already a third of the way towards a total of points historically sufficient for automatic promotion, and it is improbable that the issue of Thorp Arch will drain the wind from Simon Grayson's sails.
It is, quite frankly, someone else's problem and has been for many months.
Promotion and Thorp Arch are, for now, entirely separate matters.
Yet it is not appropriate to use one ambition to shroud the other.
Both appeared attainable at the start of the season, especially once the sale of Fabian Delph gave Simon Grayson a "fighting fund", in the words of Ken Bates, and promised to do "no harm" to the aim of repurchasing Thorp Arch. So important were both intentions that is would be ridiculous to claim that one out of two is an acceptable success.
Lest it be forgotten, in the weeks when negotiations between the club and the council were at their most intense, United were vocal about the price of losing the right to buy Thorp Arch.
An annual rental bill which was likely to move above £500,000 this year was described as "penalistic", a sum that increases by three per cent every 12 months and threatens to become prohibitive.
That implied a grave risk not only to the training complex but to the club's academy which is well established at Thorp Arch.
The failure of the council's bid does not make these problems any less acute.
United's reacted by announcing that they would continue to rent the property for the next 20 years, but therein lies the rub.
The club cannot promise beyond doubt that Leeds United – whatever their guise – will be consistently able to fund a rent which arises before the cost of upkeep and rates.
It was largely because of that worry and a desire to cut their outgoings that such urgent efforts were made to bring the council on board.
As far as Thorp Arch is concerned, the next 20 years will pass on a wing and a prayer, unless a private sale can be negotiated with its present owners, Barnaway Ltd.
But as the council's report on the facility remarked in August, the club "believes that the price would be disproportionately high." In other words, don't hold your breath.
Correspondence sent to the YEP in the past week has focused heavily on the lack of assurance that now surrounds the training ground.
The views expressed were not a flurry of misguided ideas that the failure to secure the property would have sudden ramifications, but they were unanimous in asking how the club might suffer in the future and why the board at Elland Road were unable to pull off a deal which, by United's own admission, was so vital to the health of the club.
Leeds seem to have been unhappy with several conditions set for them by the council in the final hours before the deadline, though the full details of those conditions are not clear. Nowhere in the explanation given by United was the issue of the club's ownership mentioned, but they confirmed last week that the council had sought clarification on the matter.
Regardless of whether it became a deal-breaker, there is no doubt that the very valid question of who owns Leeds United muddied the waters at a crucial time.
It is the type of poor publicity that the club can do without.
The council, in any case, will not feel guilty about its sense of timing.
The deal between Leeds and the council was put to its executive committee on August 26, no more than seven weeks before the deadline. Could this advanced stage not have been reached 12 months ago?
And if Leeds did not feel it necessary to press the local authority then, where did they hope or expect that £5.8million would appear from in the meantime? The club clearly have limited access to borrowing facilities.
Much has been made of the funds that have arrived at Elland Road from a variety of sources in the past year or so. To give the club the benefit of the doubt, they consistently argued that they were unable to find or borrow the money required to settle the bill with Barnaway Ltd, and only the rash would advocate Leeds investing money they say they can't afford.
But if Thorp Arch really was out of the current board's financial reach, that fact poses questions of its own.
Assuming that Grayson – a coach whose appointment the club deserve great credit for – is successful in reclaiming a position in the Championship, what in the way of transfer funds will the club be able to provide him with next summer?
And how will the inevitable increase in expenditure caused by promotion be met if the club felt their stability would be unduly threatened by paying almost £6million for Thorp Arch?
Away from the training ground, the attitude of certain supporters who contacted the YEP this week was that a place in the Championship would prove the high-water mark for United's present regime.
Two weeks ago, I remarked in this column that Leeds were in no desperate need of a wealthy investor while promotion from League One remained in hand.
That observation was made with the presumption that the purchase of Thorp Arch was also under control and a virtual formality. That saga has instead demonstrated the limits of the club's monetary power, and the brand presented to potential investors is arguably weakened by a training ground which belongs to a third party.
Promotion can be achieved this season and should be achieved from United's position in their league.
But what then? A groundswell of opinion says that in order to move forward at pace, the club require fresh investment, fresh blood and financial backing which underwrites a powerful vision for Leeds United.
Thorp Arch would seem to support it.
