Risedale ready to Quit Leeds.

[The Drovers Dog]

PETER RIDSDALE is ready to quit as Leeds chairman this week.
The Elland Road supremo has decided to stand down after a season of turmoil.

Ridsdale, 50, accepts he is fighting a losing battle in trying to win back fans who have turned on him for sanctioning the sale of six players to ease the Yorkshire club's crippling £77million debt.

Rio Ferdinand, Robbie Keane, Lee Bowyer, Olivier Dacourt, Robbie Fowler, and most controversially of all, Jonathan Woodgate have all been shunted through the Elland Road exit door.

Even though Ridsdale has raked in £52m from those moves, supporters will not forgive him.

And fans also hold Ridsdale more responsible for the club sliding into relegation problems than they do sacked boss Terry Venables. Ridsdale then hired Peter Reid on a caretaker basis.

The man to take over from Ridsdale will be Professor John McKenzie, a director of international development at the London Institute and the second biggest individual shareholder at the club

 

[precise]

Best news I have heard for Leeds all season long.

What in the world took Risdale so long to come to his senses?

 

[mufc_daddy]

YAY!!!!!!!!!! Good riddance! Bring back O'Leary!

 

[The Drovers Dog]

Yeh mate, O'leary might be the way to go once Risedale packs up and leaves, but O'leary might not be acceptable to the rest of the Board, due to the arguments and controversy over his book, and then the legal arguments over his contract and payout when he left or was pushed out of the door. --

 

[maddog1983]

O'leary will take over Fulham next year with Tigiana not staying ! thats my tip .... also leeds could drop .... read soccernets articles and have a look at the run in of West ham , bolton and Birmingham in comparison to leeds ... it doesnt make for good reeading for a leeds fan

 

[Paul]

bye bye

 

[ShearerM4]

Originally posted by mufc_daddy
YAY!!!!!!!!!! Good riddance! Bring back O'Leary!

as chairman ?
...
loads of Leeds fans will be pleased to hear this news.
If he does go, it would be interesting to see how a new man would cope inhertiting Risdale's money worries at the club ...

 

[Amika]

he should have resign long time ago... now is the worst time for him to go.. with leeds stuck at the bottom of the league...

 

[J-L]

hehehe yeah thats a problem!

hmmm i wonder if o'leary will forgive leeds.....

 

[monkee]

he sacks Venables, sells half of Leeds, appoints Peter Reid (who is a good div1 manager) and then leaves. Looks like a set-up. I was surprised he managed to hold onto his job for so long.

 

[Alex]

Originally posted by monkee
he sacks Venables, sells half of Leeds, appoints Peter Reid (who is a good div1 manager) and then leaves. Looks like a set-up. I was surprised he managed to hold onto his job for so long.

its official that he has left now....
Its no setup, he is staying on as a non-exec. board member, and he is still a share holder, so he'd never set anything like that up...

 

[Vazza]

This is amazing, a club that reached the semi-finals of the UCl and with a team full of young talent to one in a desperate struggle - it saddens me, although having said that Fiorentina went bankrupt despite being a top european team

 

[playmate]

finally he's gone!

 

[voetballiefhebb]

LMAO @ BBC radio 1 with Chris Moyles.

He's a Leeds fan, he's a DJ, he comes on, the first song he plays.

"This one is for you Peter"

The song has a few interviews which slags off Risdale, then it goes "Goodbye, farewell, Auf Wierdersen, Goodnight...goodnight". Soemthing like that. Bloody hillarious.

 

[The Drovers Dog]

The club released its half-year figures to the Stock Exchange this morning - and they made grim reading. The bottom line is that - as at the end of December - the club was carrying a net debt of some GBP 78.9 million, up a million on the June year-end figures. Even more worrying than that is the fact that the club had an operating loss of over GBP 17 million.

Financial expert Dr Bill Gerrard - who has done some work with the club before - said: "The figures are absolutely appalling. I had a catastrophe projection in my mind of an operating loss of around GBP 7.5million - it has even exceeded that." He went on: "These figures are a damning indictment of the senior management of the club." Gerrard pointed to the club's stress on the team's failure to achieve Champions League qualification, but said that this was being used as a catch-all excuse to avoid answering other difficult questions.

He said: "You can't go on about that forever and it doesn't explain why, even after that, the club still spent GBP 18million on new players and increased the wage bill by GBP10million. Decisions were made which will hang over the club and its supporters for the next 20 years and, without significant investment, it is difficult to see how Leeds will be anything other than a selling club for the foreseeable future." Okay, so a net debt of two times turnover is not out of this world in financial terms - and the club will receive further payments on Robbie Keane, Rio Ferdinand, Jon Woodgate and Robbie Fowler in the next year and have a commensurately lower wage bill with those players off the books along with Olivier Dacourt and Lee Bowyer.

But not included in the figures are the cost of the settlement with David O'Leary, the cost of terminating Terry Venables' GBP 2 million a year contract and any bonuses due to Peter Reid. Interest payments on the bond payable at around 8.75% when bank base rates are at an historic low will be another factor sucking cash out of the club, when Sky payments for appearances and league position are likely to be reducing.

There are a few indications that the club have decided to take the pain early on some of these numbers - player amortizations brought forward ahead of time so that any money is accrued on their sale in the next reporting period will make the accounts look good, so the figures look horrendous now but may only look pretty bad by the time the full year numbers come out in June.

But make no mistake - financial results of this sort cannot continue for very long before administration or extinction will be knocking on the door.