In his programme notes on Tuesday night Ken Bates launched his latest diatribe against his critics, calling the fans “morons” for demonstrating against him, and claiming to be the saviour of the club. Now the Leeds United Supporters Trust are asking exactly what he saved us from.
Like many people, I no longer buy the programme, as I no longer wish to pay £4 for a publication that has become little more than a Bates propaganda sheet. But thankfully his comments have been picked up by several papers, so I know that he said "I'm saying I'm unimpressed by the demonstrations of a few morons. I ain't going anywhere soon. Some fans may not like me, or agree with me, but you're stuck with me." Bates also claimed to have saved the club in 2005 and 2007.
But more disturbing is that he went onto point out that the club had film of Saturday’s demonstration on CCTV. He didn’t say exactly what they were going to do with the footage, but presumably it was a warning that the club would be able to identify those involved and possibly ban them from coming to matches just because they disagreed with the way he’s running the club. This would be a complete misuse of the CCTV equipment, seeing as it’s supposed to be there to prevent trouble and the demonstration was completely non-violent
Today the Supporters’ Trust have criticised Bates’ comments in a statement on their website. "We do not feel it is acceptable to refer to Leeds United fans as 'morons. We do not want to get into personal battles with Mr Bates or point out the numerous inaccuracies in his words." But they added "We would welcome clarification from Mr Bates on what he did save us from. Ken Bates did not save us from falling out with the BBC, newspapers, various other football reporters and commentators.”
This is a reference to Bates latest antics in preventing club employees from speaking to the BBC, except in cases where the club is contractually bound to make access available, because the corporation is in the process of making an ‘Inside Out’ TV documentary about the club's ownership. He has also banned the Guardian, after their widely respected investigative journalist David Conn dared to question the manner in which he came to retain control of the club as we came out of administration.
I’m assuming that Bates is claiming to have saved the club from going out of business, but this definitely wasn’t the case in 2007, when five other bids for the club were presented to the first creditors’ meeting after we entered administration. Whilst we can be thankful that Simon Morris didn’t get his hands on the club, seeing as he was later declared bankrupt and charged with fraud, that still left four well-funded bidders with honest intentions, who would have saved Leeds United from bankruptcy.
Bates kept control of the club because adminstrators KPMG accepted that the major creditors (the Astor Group and the Krato Trust) had no connection with Bates, and could therefore vote in his favour at the creditors’ meeting. This is despite the fact that they would only back the Bates bid for the club, even though all five of the other bids were offering the creditors better terms than Bates!
So it’s completely untrue for Bates to claim that nobody else was willing to save the club. All he achieved by retaining ownership in this way was to plunge the club into controversy, the consequences of which are still unknown. Does anybody still believe a word that Ken Bates says?