Elland back

I have always hated Leeds United Football Club. I am not alone in that sentiment. 

I recall that chant, which was a mainstay from the terraces through much of the two decades, from the 1970’s and with some variation in the targets of venom but one constant- yes, Leeds United. 

However, the strong emotions borne out of, well, the fact the Leeds United of that era were high achievers and by being notoriously un-sporting were very much tempered by sympathetic feelings for their subsequent and rapid downfall and hardships which, in the early 2000's, through a horrible combination of gamble and folly you would not wish on your worst enemies. 

Perhaps the club over extended itself on budget and entered into player and commercial agreements that they may well have been advised against but lets face it, success breeds success and to stay at the top of all competitive sports you have to not only spend a lot but importantly to be seen to be spending and without abandon. 

A football club represents a lot to a city, a town and respective communities. Many of today’s Professional League Clubs were founded in the century before last out of small local working class teams with the support of a local benefactor, usually a self made businessman wanting to put something back from their wealth generated from the local population. 

There was a real bricks and mortar connection with clubs being the freehold owners of their home grounds, some modest in their origins but soon developing into respectable stadiums. 

In the days before the madness of player transfer prices a high proportion of a clubs value/worth was tied up in the physical environs of their football grounds. They were indivisible and priceless to a club and its wider community. 

At some time however, their asset value became more important. 

In the case of Leeds United the sale of their iconic Elland Road Stadium was, in 2004, seen as a means of reducing the untenable level of debt that had aggregated and threatened the existence of the club. 

A company based in the British Virgin Islands bought Elland Road for £8 million in a leaseback deal with, it is thought, a commencing annual rental to be paid by Leeds United of around £1.7 million. At the same time the club training ground, outside Leeds at Thorp Arch, was also subject to a similar deal which although netting £4.2 million in receipts for the club also involved a leaseback of about £0.5 million a year. 

Total club costs at that time were in the region of £30 million pounds annually and there followed an enforced exodus of players and staff to significantly reduce this outlay. 

The club owners main justification for their drastic actions to the distraught supporters and wider citizens of Leeds was on a cost cutting basis but there were promises of the capital proceeds being redirected to the senior squad, Academy and ground improvements. 

Leeds United were locked into the Elland Road agreement for at least 25 years from 2004 before there would be an opportunity to buy it back. 

There continued to be political boardroom and financial upheavals amongst the club owners and the team languished in the second tier of English Football with only spasmodic flashes of good form.

It must have been a frustrating time for the City of Leeds particularly as their natural peer group of clubs from Manchester, Liverpool and London United were firmly on the up and up both on and off the pitch. 

It took the ascent to majority ownership by one of the Leeds Directors only very recently for a priority pledge to buy back Elland Road to become actionable and the regional and national media have confirmed that a deal has now been done. 

It will not have been an easy transaction given its lucrative nature to the Offshore owners but a figure of around £17 million is rumoured to have clinched the deal. 

This return of Elland Road, it is hoped will signal a resurgence in the status of Leeds United. 

I still have no real love for the team but I do accept that they have a deserved place in the top flight of English Football and look forward to seeing them back where they belong...and soon.