As we all suspected, GFH have failed to come up with the cash to pay the monthly wage bill that was due today, but thankfully the players have agreed to defer the payment for the time being, in the hope of getting the cash once the takeover situation has been sorted out.
GFH Capital believed that Massimo Cellino was contractually obliged to pay this month's wages under the agreement that the Italian was going to keep the club going for six months from January onwards, but Cellino has declined to add to the £6m he has pumped into the club already while he waits for the League to hear his appeal.
So it’s no surprise that only the general members of staff were paid today. They’re the poor sods who do the administration work behind the scenes and don’t enjoy the inflated salaries paid to footballers these days, and will be wondering if they still have jobs to go to after the end of the season. Professional Footballers' Association chief executive Gordon Taylor confirmed that the players have agreed to defer part of their wages for March when he spoke to BBC Radio Leeds.
"Arrangements are in place with regards to payment and there is going to be some proportion of wages paid today and more next week. The players are OK with it. Leeds is a big club with a large fan-base and we have no reason to believe that things won't be sorted in the near future. I'm hoping that administration can be avoided."
In the wake of this news, the supporters Trust have issued a statement to call on the Football League to "ensure that they will do everything within their power to honour the duty of care to Leeds United as one of their member clubs.” And they also said "we demand that they take every available action open to them in order to ensure that they act in the best interest of their member club and do all that they can to ensure financial stability is maintained. ..This action needs to be swift in order to avert a major crisis.”
"Clause 16 of the ootball League Regulations sets out the parameters within which we expect them to act in order to ensure financial stability remains however, should this prove unsuccessful we would expect leniency to be applied when considering any actions under clause 12.3 as we believe the current situation should be classed under Force Majeure.”
This last bit is a reference to the ‘Sporting Sanctions’ clauses in the League regulations, which sets out the rules whereby clubs going into administration will suffer a points deduction. The 'Force Majeure' section gives examples of the circumstances when they would not apply the 10 point penalty, but it does say that it is "intended that this appeals process should be limited to circumstances which are deemed unforeseeable and unavoidable.”
It’s debatable whether this argument would work (as the League would be unlikely to accept that turning down Cellio’s takeover was unforeseeable) but it might be worth a try. The League have already promised they will deal with Cellino’s appeal as quickly as possible, so the club’s financial situation can be sorted out.
Finally, a website called ‘Football Direct News’ is claiming to have discovered that "A Manchester-based multi-millionaire is considering a takeover bid for Leeds United. The mystery businessman turned down the chance to join a similar project aimed at taking control of Blackburn Rovers earlier this year, but he retains an interest in becoming involved with a football club.
Whilst it’s quite believable that anyone who tried to deal with the clowns running Blackburn would get fed up with them before too long, I haven’t seen this story reported in any other news source. But if the League reject Cellino’s appeal we’ll have a vacancy for the role of white knight riding to our rescue, so we might have to start dreaming that it’s true.