What Bates Said... 2nd March 2011

Ben Fry: Chairman, we’ll start with the loan market. Does the search continue to bring in a couple of fresh faces as we go into the run-in?

Ken Bates: Yes, it is continuing. We hope to make one or two signings this week or next. But the problem is that you have to understand that we are only interested in signing players from the Premiership because nobody competing with us is going to let their players out, just as we are not going to let any of our players out to our competitors. So you now have a situation where we are trying to sign Premiership players and the question is, who is available? The other problem is that Premiership clubs themselves are now experiencing injuries and fixture congestion. The two or three targets that Simon has had in mind, we had provisionally agreed to take them. Their present clubs have now put them on hold because they are concerned that they may not have enough cover themselves. 

The second problem is that there is no point signing a player who is rusty and hasn’t been playing football reasonably regularly otherwise we’ve only got 12 games to go and it’s no good bringing a player in who needs three or four games to get fit. And the third issue is that some agents now are saying that because they know their players are out of contract at the end of the summer, they are saying that if they come on loan now they want a contract for next season. We’re naturally saying we’re not going to buy a pig a poke, especially a player on Premiership wages. So there’s a lot of negotiations going on and it isn’t as easy as the ordinary fan might think. There’s no point in us getting a player to give us a boost now and signing him at a very high price for the future, which again will hamstring the manager’s budget for 2011/12. In your phone-in, somebody said that without and knowledge or justification that he thought we hadn’t signed players because of Ken Bates’ wages policy. Well that maybe so, because Ken Bates’ wage policy is we’re not going to spend money we haven’t got. I think it was overemphasised by the fact that yesterday Aston Villa announced a £32M… £32M loss. And that’s because of their £19M turnover last year, they spent £18M of it on wages. Oldham hadn’t paid their February wages on time, Plymouth haven’t paid any of their staff for two months. This financial crisis, which has been on the horizon for some time, and some clubs have been blissfully ignoring it is now coming home to roost on a number of clubs. We are not going to get involved in that situation and there are one or two players at Leeds United who may be facing the same problem in May. 

What we’re saying is, if we get promoted this year then player’s salaries will get reviewed because we know we can afford but we are not making long-term commitments on a promise of future performance. And that is the only limit to Ken Bates’ wage policy. For the good and future of Leeds United. Having said that, we have 12 games to play and we’re looking forward to winning some of them. The first thing we have got to do is plug our leaky defence which has now conceded eight goals in three games. It isn’t acceptable. 

BF: You mention 12 games to go, do you see it as all still to play for or do you think second place is still a possibility? 

KB: Well it’s becoming increasingly difficult as the games trickle away. Same old story, too many draws. We’re drawing games that we should win. In the old days, years and years ago when it was two points for a win and one for a draw, when you got a draw you said “well we picked up a point” but with three points for a win and one for a draw you now regard a draw as not having gained a point but dropped two. And we’re dropping too many two points, which I think Simon and his backroom staff are addressing.  

BF: You mentioned the backroom staff, there has been an appointment this week to the backroom team – Chris Sulley has joined as the new academy manager. What pedigree does he bring to the role? 

KB: To start with, I think we have to go back to probably last year, when we decided the quality of players coming through and the fact that our youth team were bottom of the league, that changes had to be made. But there’s no point in replacing the then incumbents with somebody else just for the sake of making a change. I think it’s a significant tribute to the diligence of the manager and Gwyn Williams, the head of football, that they have taken over four months to make an appointment. That indicates their determination to get it right. A lot of youth team managers and so on and so forth are ex-players who sometimes they were assistant managers or first team coaches. Sometimes they were even managers and then they sort of take this job as academy director as a last resort because they are looking for a job. Chris Sulley is different. He started at Chelsea as a kid and Gwyn knew him of old so there is form there if you like. So we know a lot about his character. Secondly,  when he finished quite a reasonable journeyman’s footballing career, he had played over 400 games, he went straight into youth. So has been concentrating on youth for over 10 years now and his current position before he joined, he was in fact a freelance consultant to the FA and one or two other clubs. During that time he spent time at his own expense travelling Europe to see how other countries tackle their youth challenges, particularly Holland which is generally regarded as having the best system in Europe. So he comes in and he hits the ground running, knowing what he wants to do and having done it elsewhere. So we are very pleased to have him. He lives in Darwin in Lancashire, he joined us on Tuesday March 1 and he is already house hunting. He’s not going to commute from Lancashire, he’s going to move into Yorkshire, which again is a good positive sign. And I think we have laid the foundations for hopefully a very successful renaissance of our youth policy, which had stalled. We’re the biggest club in Yorkshire. Yorkshire is the biggest county, its population is bigger than Scotland , it’s bigger than Northern Ireland, there should be enough talent there to start building a homegrown team of Yorkshire boys at Leeds leavened with a few international quality stars and that’s our target.  

BF: On Friday, the deadline closed for the early renewal period on season tickets. How many renewals did you get in the end and were you pleased with the response? 

KB: I’m actually overwhelmed with the response. For this season, we have got 13,096 season tickets and that includes the 20-year season tickets which were honoured after the administration. As of Friday night, we actually sold 10,500. In fact, as of last night, we had so many season tickets coming in over the weekend we still had 1,740 season tickets left to process which is, well, amazing. I don’t know how else you can describe it. It’s a sign of the support and loyalty of our fans. Now season tickets for people who didn’t renew are the earlybird price, the season tickets go on sale from Saturday to the 18th of March. I’ll repeat that, from Saturday until the 18th of March. The 18th of March is the deadline for fans to claim their current seat. After the 18th of March, we will not be processing season tickets until further notice but we think until after the end of the season. And then we have to review which league we are in, whether we’re in the Championship or the Premiership.  

BF: Now whilst we’re talking about season tickets, fans can now renew their membership as well for 2011/12. And once again there is an early renewal price available. 

KB: Yep, the new prices are until the 30th of April. People can renew their memberships online only until the 30th of April. If people don’t renew before 30th of April, either because they can’t use computers or they don’t know anybody who can, then they will receive their renewals forms through the post from the 1st of May. Don’t forget people who joined the extra time memberships for 09/10 and 10/11, yours is also available until the 30th. Of course, anybody can still now take out an extra time membership for now and next season. And I have to say that as we speak, so far this season, we have 38,900 members which is a record. And it’s still climbing. Once again, we’re obviously very pleased. And we welcome another branch from Ireland, the Navan Whites from County Meath. They make our 61st regional member’s club, which is absolutely fantastic. There are now 18-20 people in the process of forming their club, which is tremendous. You’re going to have to work much harder next year with Leeds on the Road to make sure everybody gets their fair share.  

BF: Do you see 40,000 members as a realistic target for next season? 

KB: I would hope so yeah. We have got quite a few people in Norway who are not yet members because the application form was a bit difficult to translate into Norwegian so we are doing a simplified format for that because there are three or four thousand people over there who we can have a go at.   

BF: Now next up on the playing field, it’s Doncaster Rovers in another Yorkshire derby at Elland Road on Saturday. Are you enjoying the amount of Yorkshire derbies this season? 

KB: I love derbies because obviously because local derbies are great fun, a great atmosphere, we’re looking for 27,000-28,000 at the game this Saturday. Doncaster of course, had a crippling run of defeats and injuries so the fact they went to Derby last night and won 3-1 was very encouraging. Now they have broken their duck, maybe they can go back to losing ways.  

BF: And one final issue before we let you go today, the Football League have moved the last day of the season from Sunday the 8th of May to Saturday the 7th of May to suit the TV companies. Are you surprised, given how far in advance these things are planned, that the Football League made this decision? 

KB: I think that they probably [this bit makes no sense, presume it was an editing error by YR] ironed their parlours would come on thinking that ooh we are going to one lie. I’m not too bothered because we’re playing QPR so it’s Saturday instead of Sunday, it’s probably better for our fans who can go and enjoy Sunday off. But we are in danger of becoming a total slave to TV. We at Leeds are fighting to try keep it within reasonable consideration. Finally, our average gate this season before Saturday, we budgeted for 25,000 and it’s 26,920. Which again, is a sign that Leeds are back. So we’re getting there, step-by-step, brick-by-brick.

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