Beckford and Howson celebrate the good times.
It is a fresh start this season for Leeds United as all ties to Ken Bates have now been removed.
There is no denying it has been the longest and hardest eight years for the club, and supporters with numerous ups and downs with pretty much everything dishing out disappointment.
New owners GFH Capital have stepped up to the plate making remarkable changes to the club, with ticket prices lowered, Radio Leeds back doing commentary, players being signed and Bates no longer associated at Leeds United, a new manager and chairman. This is everything that fans could have wished for and with over 30,000 people already booked tickets for this Saturdays first game of the season tie to Brighton at Elland Road, I think the decisions have been proved popular.
Back in 2007 when Leeds entered administration, the then acting administrator KPMG agreed to sell the club to the newly formed Leeds United Football Club Limited which Bates was one of three directors, little did fans know this was where everything would get complicated.
To this day there is slight confusion on who actually owned the ground and training ground, was it Bates, the club, the council, his wife?
A lot of issues rose when Bates was chairman, mostly that he was more bothered about money rather than getting the club back into top flight football. It was a very frustrating time, players were only brought in on a free even though the ticket prices had escalated to their highest. Where was this money going? Well it's safe to say possibly in his back pocket, with the recent revelations of his £1million deal to have a private jet bring him to home games for three years from Monaco.
He also set up his own radio station at the ground 'Yorkshire Radio' which brought the live commentary after he banned BBC Radio Leeds from the Stadium. This would bring in more money for himself, but it left some fans unable to follow their club, if you lived in Yorkshire or had Sky, then great if you didn't then you missed out. People were unable to listen live to games if the lived down South, Lancashire or even across the globe. Yorkshire Radio wasn't the easiest station to pinpoint their airways. Don't get me wrong the journalists there were great, they had real passion for the club, but were they free to give their true opinions after the games?
Surely now this is possible, but there is one thing hanging over us like a dark cloud- the suing from Ken Bates over his sacking as president of the club.
A new era is upon the club and everyone associated, and they can now look forward to the season and maybe a promotion back to where they belong; the Premiership.
Twitter: @alice_stoker
No comments:
Post a Comment