For ten years from the mid 1960's, Leeds United were a power in football, built by their manager
Don Revie into one of the strongest clubs in England and Europe. A team of internationals,
led by their fiery captain Billy Bremner, won the football league championship in 1969
and the FA Cup in '72. Leeds won the league again two years later and their supporters
always believe they only lost the '75 European Cup final to German Champions Bayern Munich due
to highly controversial refereeing decisions. Leeds declined in the 1980's but recovered
again to win the final football league championship in 1992, just before the Premier League was
formed. As recently as 2001, a young, exciting Leeds team under David O'leary was competing
with Manchester United in the Premier League, and reached the semi finals of the Champions
League, losing 3-0 on aggregate to Valencia. Yet within two years, the modern, re-built
Leeds United suffered a profound collapse, from which the club has still not recovered.
The Chariman, Peter Ridsdale, admitted the club had borrowed heavily to by star players,
and famously said of the dry success, we lived the dream. Leeds had to sell the star players,
including Rio Ferdinand to Manchester United, but they were still relegated in 2004 with
debts of more than £100m. A group of local businessman took over, settled much of the
debts, sold more players, and even the Elland Road stadium and training ground to a landlord,
but could not keep the club steady financially. In January 2005, they announced a takeover
by Ken Bates, who two years earlier had sold Chelsea to the Russian olligark Roman Abramovic,
and retired to the tax haven of Monaco. Bates said he was representing a consortium of owners
whose identity was never revealed, through funds registered in off-shore tax havens including
the British Virgin Islands. But on his return to football, Bates too could not make the
finances at Leeds work. Wages paid to players had increased throughout the 2000's, but the
huge gap in income with the multi millions of pounds paid for television rights in the
Premier League, means that clubs in the Championship struggle to balance the books. Leeds were
relegated to League One, the old third division, in 2007, for the first time in their history,
and Bates cut Leeds debts by putting the club into administration. They stayed in League
One for three seasons before winning promotion in 2010 and the following year, Bates announced
that he had bought the club from the unidentified investors. He then sold Leeds in 2012 to a
bank based in Bahrain, gulf finance house, and they in turn sold in 2014 to an Italian-American
businessman, Massimo Cellino. He had been convicted of tax fraud in Italy, making him
unfit to be the owner or Director of a Football League club, but he returned after a year
when his criminal conviction was considered "spent" in English law. Cellino has sacked
six managers in just two years, but his abbrasive methods have not reclaimed success on the
pitch. So Leeds United, still a big city football club of great traditions, play on in the Championship.
In the Elland Road ground that they do not own, their large body of long suffering supporters
wondering how it all went so wrong, but still singing the glory days of old.