Bates Out?

Rumours have been doing the rounds recently that ken bates has finally decided to sell Leeds United and take the money for his retirement. But to be honest, we as leeds fans have heard it all before, and as usual have been bitterly disappointed when nothing happens. But this rumour has a bit more backing than the others, it’s been well documented by football blogs and even the Wikipedia page of the person involved. The company supposedly interested in a takeover is called MLSE (Maple Leaf Sports Entertainment) and is famous for owning Toronto FC in the MLS, and the ice hockey team Toronto Maple Leafs. The main source that gives this rumour a backbone is the owner of MLSE’s Wikipedia page, Larry Tanenbaum, which has a recently added section that says ‘Tanenbaum has recently submitted an offer to become the new owner of Nottingham Forest Football Club, an NPower Championship side that was left ownerless after the tragic death of their owner; Nigel Doughty, midway through the 2011/2012 season. However, during the early summer months of 2012 he has been widely rumoured to be attempting to buy Leeds United Football Club from Monaco based business man Kenneth Bates.’ If you look into it, it’s clear that this guys interested in football, and you can’t blame him for been interested in Leeds and forest. Both clubs have stadiums that have experienced European and premiership football, and Elland road is a UEFA 5 star rated stadium, and neither ground is in dyer need of a major redevelopment that would put potential investors off. I can’t speak from a Nottingham forest perspective due to the fact that I’m a Leeds fan, but the future of Leeds under ken bates is most probably financially solid, whereas forests future is difficult to predict. The tragic death of Nigel Doughty shocked football mainly due to the fact that a healthy, non smoker had died of a cardiac arrest, but meant that the man who had pumped more than £100 million pounds into his boyhood team was gone, with the club left to be controlled by the new chairman, and without an owner. Back to Leeds’ situation, I think that we would all be happy if ken bates actually started to give money to Neil warnock to spend in the transfer window, instead of us seemingly signing loan players and free agents for another season, but it seems impossible that it’s going to happen anytime soon. If a new owner comes in then brilliant. To own an American soccer team means that you’ve got to have serious money to spend on players and wages because Americans seem to earn a hell of a lot more money than players in the championship, and in some cases the premier league. But the main factor that Leeds fans would want to have is trust. We’ve taken 7 years of lies from ken bates with broken promises woven in, and if we got an owner that comes in and says ‘no more lies, we want promotion, Neil will get £____ to spend and we WILL be keeping our star players’, then we will finally be satisfied and can give our full support to the promotion cause the future will be bright once again.