It's quite a while back to remember the details without checking but I'd agree that the football debts continued for a few seasons until the contracts ran out but should have reduced each year as players were shed and as contracts expired. >From memory I thought the Krasner buyout from the Plc shed more debt than £60M >because that would have only covered the debt from the bondholders and the >release of their charge over Elland Road. I'm trying to remember what Bates said when he arrived and what the next set of accounts showed. Of course we also need to deduct the directors loans that the Krasner board left in after Bates' arrival as I don't think that much of that ever got repaid.
I'd also agree that Krasner's board ran out of money and were facing falling off a cliff with the IR/HMRC. I still wonder what could have been done if Krasner had tried to involve the fans more directly in some sort of fans ownership scheme. I suppose my real point is to break the assumed link between Ridsdale's (and the Profs) mistakes and Bates putting the club into administration. ----- Original Message ----- From: [email protected] It's true that Krasner and co. got rid of about £60m of debt when they took over in 2004, but weren't we still hemorrhaging cash once they took over because some of the Ridsdale era contracts didn't expire till 2006 or 2007? Weren't we still having to pay huge amounts to Danny Mills, Robbie Fowler, Gary Kelly and Seth Johnson, and possibly others? In the Bates era we had to pay Johnson £1million to cancel his contract, but I'm sure we were still committed to paying huge sums to several others under contracts we couldn't get out of, in several cases for some years after they had left the club. And at the time Krasner sold to Bates at the start of 2005 there was a substantial and growing debt to the Inland Revenue, who were threatening to wind us up. None of the above means that I'm a Bates apologist, as I know he went on to do a lot of damage himself, but there was certainly still a big problem to be dealt with at the time he took over. Tim W. _______________________________________________ Leedslist mailing list Info and options: http://mailman.greennet.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/leedslist To unsubscribe, email [email protected] John 'Grampa' Sykes Rest In Peace old lad 28th Oct 1938 - 12 Nov 2013 MARCHING ON TOGETHER
