Has he blamed you yet?

Love Leeds Hate Bates issued the following statement in October 09 following the collapse of the Thorp Arch purchase by Leeds City Council, via the blog Clarkeonenil:

David Conn, The Guardian, Colin Burgon MP, Lord Mawhinney, Jacob Adler, Leeds City Council, Leeds City Council’s lawyers, meddling fans, the supporters club, LUST, Uncle Tom Cobbly and all, who Ken Bates will try and fault for the failure of the club to re- purchase Thorp Arch in his infamous programme notes is anyone’s guess. Yet the blame for the fiasco lies squarely at the feet of one individual: Ken Bates himself.

The ownership of Thorp Arch is not imperative to the success of Leeds United. While we still have access to the training facilities, the playing management has proved time and again that talent will emerge from Leeds United’s Academy. Ownership, however, is desirable: it would guarantee the future of an academy for more than the 20-year rental lease, make the club a more attractive proposition for investors and release us from crippling rent costs of almost half a million pounds a year.

At every turn since Ken Bates revealed the re-purchase deadline, the club has indicated that re-acquiring Thorp Arch was at the top of the club’s agenda, from the destabilising of a fan group proposal to raise funds with a suggested similar scheme that never appeared, to us being told that the Fabian Delph fee would ‘do no harm’ to the plan. Loyal fans were given every encouragement to believe that Thorp Arch would soon be back in the club fold. In theory, matchday income, increased revenue from conferencing facilities, money from player sales and compensation for youth snatched from the academy by Premiership pillagers should all mean the club’s coffers are swelling. Yet clearly not enough was available for either a total repurchase nor for a substantial deposit to acquire a mortgage – lest we forget at the current annual rent, we could have paid off the £6million purchase price eight years before our current lease ends.

As a result of its failures, the club appealed to Leeds City Council for help at the eleventh hour. Now while Mr Bates may prefer to do his business by hiding the ownership of the club behind offshore trusts and Swiss company law and banking regulations, the council could never have played hard and fast with tax payers money without certain guarantees: one being knowledge of who, ultimately, it was dealing with. That Mr Bates further managed to muddy the ownership issue with his conflicting statements in courts of law this year only highlights the incompetence with which he and his senior management team have handled the whole affair and the club since smirking back into control post administration.

Most Leeds United fans drew a mental line in the sand over Thorp Arch. It was the litmus test as to whether the Bates regime could make a start in taking (or being seen to take) the club forward. It was a test in which the club’s senior management has failed miserably, it begs the question, following on from the Levi case debacle and with the Football League’s questions on ownership still to be answered, how low can you go Mr Bates?