I was going to write a piece inspired by the rage I feel after Leeds United Football Club went into administration earlier today.
It was going to begin, like all articles about Leeds, by talking about where they were just a few short years ago. I might have remarked that they were so popular that many people were prepared to regard them as their second team, despite Lee Bowyer and David O’Gardenleave. I might have pointed out that, by re-uniting Ken Bates and Dennis Wise – surely the most savvy and likeable coupling since Flashman and Fry at Barnet – many Leeds fans no longer regard the club as their first or second team.
My thoughts would then turn to the wider ramifications of an industry which regarded administration as a business tool. The analysis would touch on the ever-decreasing pool of people prepared to lend money to football clubs and, given that most clubs would be considered sub-prime, the ever-increasing conditions placed on the conduct of the club.
I intended to observe that the future lay not in investment (because even economists admit that there are only so many times that you can find a greater fool), but either in reverse buyouts in which the club is asset-stripped and saddled with debt, or in fans buying clubs and putting assets beyond the reach of the locusts.
I would have spent very little time admitting that many people probably reached this conclusion a long time ago, but would have concluded that those in control of Leeds had once again pissed all over most of the other clubs in the Football League. Leeds can now start afresh in League One, with the Football League’s insistence that “all ‘football debts’ must be settled in full” to comply with its insolvency policy ringing in their tin ears. Do you think “settled” means the same thing as “paid”?
But then I decided not to waste my first free evening in ages on Ken Fucking Bates.
Inspiring and inspired stuff (and mercifully easy for me to understand). Far be it from me to experience shadenfreude at the hands of a club whose fans are some of the worst in the country, who regularly refer to Man U fans as “fucking Munichs” and who manage, like their counterparts from Birmingham City do at Edgbaston, to pollute cricket matches at Headingley when they don’t have football to go to in the summer. No it isn’t that. My wife’s family, who are delightful, are from that part of the world and there are many other delightful people there so I bear no particular grudge. But if ever there was an example that needed making for the benefit of the “industry” of football the wellbeing of that club is a worthy sacrifice to make.
I particularly enjoyed Publicity Pontius Pilate Pete Ridsdale on 5 Live utterly washing his hands of the whole business and wiping the slate of history clean. “That’s someone else’s problem now – I’ve got to look after Cardiff City”. Okay fair enough, Pontius. Let’s forget about it all and move on. Leeds fans and their chairmen have really deserved eachother.