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Our findings include:
Cellino has saved the club £10.5m by renegotiating his deal to buy Leeds from former owners Gulf Financial House, after finding ‘untrue numbers’ in the accounts.
New manager Dave Hockaday has replaced Brian McDermott on approximately one tenth of his predecessor’s salary.
But Cellino does not trust him to identify new talent and has cast doubt on his position before the season even starts.
New signings are forbidden from staying at the Malmaison in the city centre because the hotel’s colour scheme is purple, a colour Cellino believes is bad luck.Leeds United don't even own their chairs: owner Massimo Cellino on the mess to have engulfed Elland Road
Cellino took over the club from GFH Capital The Italian sacked Brian McDermott and brought in Dave Hockaday
Leeds start the Championship season against Millwall on Saturday Leeds United in the 21st century is synonymous with upheaval and uncertainty, but even by this once proud club’s recent standards, Massimo Cellino has ratcheted things up to another level.
The convicted fraudster, as ruthless as he is charismatic, has swept into Elland Road and not so much taken an axe to the mess he inherited but a machine gun — obliterating waste and leaving plenty of collateral damage.
Cellino sees himself as the saviour of a club losing £1million a month. ‘Loose cannon,’ is how others familiar with the Italian’s ways describe him.
A Sportsmail investigation into his uncompromising reign, including a lengthy interview with the 58-year-old owner, reveals a fearsome cost-cutter who makes many of his decisions based on impulse and superstition as much as through forensic analysis.
Our findings include:
Cellino has saved the club £10.5m by renegotiating his deal to buy Leeds from former owners Gulf Financial House, after finding ‘untrue numbers’ in the accounts.
New manager Dave Hockaday has replaced Brian McDermott on approximately one tenth of his predecessor’s salary.
But Cellino does not trust him to identify new talent and has cast doubt on his position before the season even starts.
New signings are forbidden from staying at the Malmaison in the city centre because the hotel’s colour scheme is purple, a colour Cellino believes is bad luck.
Superstition and serious business acumen are mangled together when it comes to Cellino.
In a 90-minute telephone conversation, the Italian only highlights and heightens the contradictions that make up his character.
He is disarmingly candid and yet deviously secretive; he can produce quiet charm then explode in anger; he can reel off numbers like a maths boffin and also swear like a trooper. Some questions and challenges bounce off him no matter how insistent; others result in an unstoppable 10-minute answer.
And he has expert timing with comic one-liners.
While there is much speculation about the finances and running of Leeds, it is Cellino’s comments about Hockaday, plucked from obscurity having been sacked as manager of non-league Forest Green Rovers, which prove most interesting. The squad are believed to be supportive of an amiable man who is implementing a passing style that has seen steady improvement in pre-season form.
But Cellino, known in Italy as a mangiallenatori — a manager eater — after dismissing 36 in 22 years in charge of Cagliari, will not hesitate to act if things are not to his liking.
Cellino said: ‘I had more or less 50 coaches in my existence, they are all the same. I used to have a boat, I used to pay the captain of the boat. You know what my strategy was? If he doesn’t do what I like to do with my boat, then I can drive my boat on my own.
‘I put myself always in a position to be free and to run a company the way I like, because I use my face, my name, my credibility. If they don’t do what I like to do — I do on my own!’
It is clear player recruitment is out of Hockaday’s hands.
Consultant Graham Bean, the former FA compliance officer, and sporting director Nicola Salerno assist Cellino in spotting potential signings.
It’s a complicated recruitment structure, and some connected with the club have reservations. Chesterfield centre back Liam Cooper, for example, was chased after Salerno watched him play just once, in a pre-season draw against Leeds. Then negotiations broke down over money.
Hockaday, paid between £80-90,000 compared to the £750,000 salary his predecessor McDermott had earned, wanted a 31-year-old defender available on a free, but Cellino refused.
‘He has asked me about five or six players,’ said the Italian before unintentionally damning his new manager: ‘Don’t forget where he came from; league five.
‘Talking with managers of Premier League clubs, Championship clubs, is a new thing. He’s like a baby, who is in a toy shop.’
Deals on the brink of completion are prone to collapse as Cellino applies a tough stance with agents and players. Roma’s Federico Viviani looked set to join, but is understood to have then made too many demands of the club’s straight-talking owner.
Five players have, however, joined from Italy and there is some excitement about their potential.
Cellino prefers to agree to smaller fees initially before paying in full if moves are a success. Forward Souleymane Doukara cost £500,000 for this year, but will cost an additional £1.5m to buy next summer. Player contracts are heavily incentivised.
But there would appear to be one substantial barrier to any player signing for Cellino: a birthday on the 17th of the month. Cellino has thought the number unlucky since suffering a car accident in his twenties that came on Friday 17th and involved a vehicle with 17 in the registration plate.
Saving money is Cellino’s prime focus. ‘I didn’t sleep for six months,’ Cellino said. ‘This club cost £125,000 per day — 365 bloody days a year! Every day I find a new surprise. We don’t own even one bloody chair!’
His biggest financial saving to date, however, has been in renegotiating with former majority owners Gulf Finance House over how much the Italian would ultimately pay for his 75 per cent share.
Under the terms of the contract, Cellino agreed to buy the club for £11m and also service debts of £24m, much owed to GFH or associates of the Middle Eastern bank. But after studying the accounts, Sportsmail can reveal, Cellino threatened to take legal action against GFH before convincing them to restructure the deal.
In our conversation, he declined to go into exact figures, but did say: ‘The issue was very strange. The numbers, they were not true. GFH were not able to understand what they were talking about. They were not even able to run a fruit shop.
‘When I bought the club it was technically bankrupt. I met GFH and told them, “We need to stop fighting. If not, we go to war with the lawyers.†They agreed.
‘I don’t like to see the blood. It’s better if you get what you want without fighting. In six months I spent £1.5m on lawyers. Now GFH have 25 per cent of a company worth 10 times what it was before.’
In a dark and mysterious sideshow, the former Leeds managing director David Haigh is spending his third month in a Dubai police cell without interview by investigators, having been arrested on suspicion of embezzlement during his time at GFH. He denies all charges and friends are concerned there is a link between his statements about possessing damaging evidence against GFH and his incarceration.
Cellino promised to purchase Elland Road as soon as he took over but was swamped by unforeseen payments elsewhere and the wrangle with GFH. The £11m sale of Ross McCormack could be used and he has pledged to pay £16m before November.
Cellino’s sale of the club’s best player has enraged fans, but he has a different view of events.
He explained: ‘Ross McCormack is a beautiful player. I didn’t come to Leeds to sell Ross McCormack. But for him I was nothing, a new owner, he’s got a lot of money from Fulham, the chance to live in London. What can I say? I love you McCormack, stay with me?
‘He doesn’t give a f***. He didn’t show up to training. He didn’t fly with the club to pre-season. I was so p***** off that when Fulham called me I asked them for £10m to make them not buy the player. They said yes! Bloody hell.
'David Hockaday, the first day he heard McCormack wanted to go he said, “I don’t want him in pre- season, sell himâ€. I told Hockaday, “Did I ask your f****** advice? No. So shut the f*** upâ€.’
Gary Cooper, chairman of the Leeds United Supporters Trust with some 10,000 members, says surveys showed Cellino is popular among fans for his uncompromising attitude and approach to sorting business. He is also a frequent visitor to nearby pubs and will happily chat to locals.
But Cooper is concerned that recent attempts to engage in serious dialogue on important issues have been met with silence. He said: ‘If Cellino doesn’t fulfil that November deadline then more and more of the fans will question his credibility.’
Cellino also predicts a battle to get out of the remarkable contract on the club’s Thorp Arch training facility, locking Leeds into total payments of a further £9m. Because of the cost-cutting, only around six staff attend Thorp Arch daily, including Hockaday.
It has been described as a ‘ghost town’ by regulars. The chef has been dismissed, and food is driven up from the restaurant at Elland Road. Some players prefer to bring their own supplies to training.
Despite the chaos and uncertainty, morale among the squad is understood to be positive. The match at Millwall on Saturday is a daunting task, particularly for those new boys from Italy.
Cellino will expect victory. He is a man who likes numbers and none more so than the three points on offer in the season’s opener.
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