Bleed White
The fall and rise of Leeds United... to be continued
by
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The football fan
You helplessly sit and watch your football club suffer the indignity of public humiliation as it is torn apart by men in suits. Your club pleads poverty with spiralling debts so you dig deep into your pockets. You ask yourself whether you're getting value for your overpriced ticket but you cling to the hope that this might just be the season that fortunes will change.
You are praised for your undying support by the people running your club but you are never quite sure of their sincerity. Customer service is still stuck in the dark ages but you put up with it. The bond you have to your football club is seen as brand loyalty because no matter how badly you are treated you will always support your club. Football is like religion. They are the two brands in the world that guarantee undying loyalty.
On a good day you've got the best players in the world with flair and style. On a bad day the game is littered with oversized egos, strange haircuts and brightly coloured boots. The results never quite go your way and you blame the officials. So you look forward to the next match, the one that always brings fresh hope.
Every season is different. Players come and go, Chairmen come and go and Managers move on even quicker.
The fans are the only constant in the ever changing world of football. We are the ones that have grown up supporting the club through good times and bad. We remember the great matches and the special players; the old stadium the way it used to be back in the day. We are the football club.
This book is written for the fans.
Introduction ?
This is the story of the passion and pain of supporting Leeds United Football Club during its most tragic period in history and covers the key events that have taken place since the beginning of the new Millennium until the end of the 2009-10 season. It has been written because it is an interesting story, because there are lessons to be learnt along the way but mainly because in the early days I needed to vent my frustrations at the stupidity of it all. Latterly those frustrations turned to excitement and the writing became more pleasurable as the club started to turn the corner and we made more and more progress. Until of course those last few weeks of the 2009-10 season where it looked like we might just miss out on promotion yet again. The nerves were shot as we left it until the last twenty minutes of the last match of the season to finally secure our place back in the Championship.
In 2001 Leeds United had reached the Semi Final of the European Champions League with a team full of young internationals playing fast flowing entertaining football - a team that everyone was talking about, a team that other players wanted to play for, a team that could only get better with maturity. On the 1
Just five seasons later in 2007-2008 Leeds United were playing in the third tier of English football and were bottom of the league fifteen points behind everyone else - the lowest ever position in their history. They had fallen from first to sixty-eighth in league rankings. The fixture list no longer included the big European clubs like Manchester United and Arsenal but lesser known teams such as Cheltenham and Walsall. Lesser known teams that would beat the once great Leeds United Football Club.
By the end of the 2009-2010 season, eight years since Leeds had been top of the Premier League, the Club has had four Chairmen, eight Managers, been in Administration, had four different owners, sold its ground, sold its training academy, been penalised twenty five points, been relegated twice, lost two Play-Off Finals, lost a Play-Off Semi-Final and finally gained promotion back to the second tier of English football.
They have written off debts of over £130 million and came within forty-eight hours of being wound up.
But by the summer of 2010 at last times are beginning to change. Chairman Ken Bates has instilled financial discipline and the club is at last being run at a profit. There are plans to develop the East Stand and build a hotel and under Manager Simon Grayson the team has just been promoted to the Championship. This is a massive step towards getting the team back to the top flight of English football. Its early days but the signs are very good.
So what went wrong?
There is nothing mystical about what went wrong at Leeds. In fact, sound business practices would have prevented most of the problems which were caused by big egos taking too many risks in the pursuit of glory. Leeds United were the first high profile football club to hit the headlines because of their financial problems and today more clubs than ever are struggling to keep their heads above water with huge debts. The chapter Football and Finance looks at the general state of football and puts our demise into perspective by looking at what is happening at other clubs. It also gives a view as to what is wrong and what needs to be done about it.
The main purpose of this book however is to give a fan's view of what it's like to helplessly watch your football club self destruct. It describes the heartache as events go from bad to worse and the euphoria as things start to change for the better. It gives the author's personal views and feelings as they were written at the time based on publicly available information and nothing has been changed with the benefit of hindsight. This is essentially a diary of a Leeds United fan looking at events both on and off the pitch.
I hope you enjoy the book even if you don't enjoy the story.
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About the Book
Bleed White is the story of Leeds United in the new Millennium. At the turn of the century a young vibrant team had ambitions to challenge the domination of Manchester United and Arsenal and by the 1st January 2002 they sat proudly at the top of the Premier League arguably the best league in Europe. But disaster was around the corner. Mismanagement both on and off the field saw the club fall into serious financial difficulty. Managers and players came and went and the club was relegated from the Premier League in May 2004. The downfall continued and they were relegated from the Championship in May 2007 and started in the third tier of British football for the first time in the club’s history. The club had also been put into administration and to make matters worse they were forced to start the next season with a fifteen point penalty following a dispute with the Inland Revenue which caused them to break Football League rules. But the club is on the way back and after three long years in Division One, the future is looking much brighter. Ken Bates the Chairman has restored financial stability and Simon Grayson an excellent young manager who happens to be a fan and ex Leeds player has given the fans hope at last. This story is a fan's view of what happened at Leeds United Football Club during those eventful years. The book covers issues both on and off the pitch and has been written from two different perspectives - wearing a level headed business hat one minute and a passionate Leeds United baseball cap the next. Business objectivity meets football fan emotion and they hate each other.
About the Author
Phil Merrick is a former senior executive with one of the biggest banks in Europe. He has a track record of building high performing teams and is an expert in change management and business transformation. Phil has spent a great deal of his career in trouble shooting roles and helping businesses improve performance, particularly through the organisation and management of people. His more recent roles include merger and integration planning, the development and implementation of business strategies and overseeing major change programmes. Phil's passion is football. He has played and managed at amateur level and for the last fifteen years or so has been a season ticket holder at Elland Road. Born in Pudsey he is a life long Leeds fan and now lives in North Wales with his wife Sian, and daughters Gemma, Hannah and Kate.