Leeds United - Still Damned after all these years? Fans should be wary of convicted fraudster Massimo Cellino, as Italian owner promises Premier League football by 2016 -Italian has told players to bring their own sandwiches to training, buy their own matchday socks and demanded they live in Leeds -He hired Dave Hockaday off the back of seven defeats in eight games for Forest Green Rovers -Cellino has promised to buy back Elland Road by November and said the club will be playing Premier League football within two years -Fans are believing in the Italian after the nightmare they have endured under owners like Peter Risdale It is a sad indictment of the ruinous procession of owners who have occupied the boardroom at Elland Road over the last decade that Leeds United fans are welcoming convicted fraudster Massimo Cellino as their new man in charge. There is a grim fatalism among the faithful, a sense that Britain’s most dysfunctional club will always make news for the wrong reasons, a trend that began 40 years ago with Brian Clough’s disastrous 44 days in charge immortalised in the book The Damned United. One more owner marking his arrival at Elland Road with a series of eyebrow-raising quotes and seemingly illogical decisions is grist to the mill. Just like Clough telling Billy Bremner and Co to dump all their medals in the dustbin, Cellino’s wind of change is nothing more than a mild breeze to the Leeds fans. The Italian has made a number of madcap moves since taking over in April after overturning a Football League ruling which deemed he was not a ‘fit and proper person’ to own a football club. He shut the players’ canteen, told them to bring their own sandwiches, demanded they live in the city, and has now informed them they must buy their own match-day socks. Cellino hired Dave Hockaday as coach, a man who was sacked by non-League Forest Green Rovers after losing seven of eight games. But he has promised to buy back their stadium ‘by November’ and get Leeds back into the Premier League within two years. He offers hope to fans who have been let down by owners and managers since chairman Peter Ridsdale, whose legacy of reckless spending is still felt at the club. Lifelong Leeds fan Dave Simpson, who wrote The Last Champions, a book about Howard Wilkinson’s 1992 title winners, claimed even the decision to recruit Hockaday is defensible. ‘We’ve had big-name managers — Terry Venables, Peter Reid, Neil Warnock — none of them have ever done anything at Leeds, so it might be worth having a go on a complete unknown quantity,’ he said. There has been a marked turnaround in opinion about Cellino. When he first tried to take over in February, angry fans barricaded his car inside the West Stand car park. Then a prankster released online a phone conversation where he ranted about Leeds striker Noel Hunt’s wages and the ‘f****** devil’ David Haigh (Leeds then managing director). ‘He tells it how it is in no uncertain terms and the fans relate to that because that’s a very Yorkshire trait,’ said Simpson. Cellino, 56, said this week that at the time of his buy-out, Leeds cost £125,000 a day to run, of which £70,000 was essentially losses. Naylor, such a diehard Leeds fan he had a white rose tattoo inked on his upper arm when he moved to Ipswich, was the most surprising departure. He coached the Under-18s to a league title last season and secured professional contracts for 14 out of 18 of his players — the best ever success rate at the club. Bromby even offered to continue working with the Under-16s for free. ‘I love the club and I wanted to grow as a coach there,’ he said. ‘I’ve had a season ticket since I was a boy and so have my dad and granddad so I wanted to give something back. Richard and I are both local lads.’ Bromby said he ‘holds no grudges against Leeds’, and he is often called by first-team players for advice. ‘I hope Cellino can be a success. He seems to be stripping things back to basics with the players.’ Gone, too, is club captain and top scorer Ross McCormack, sold to Fulham for £11million. ‘I didn’t want to sell McCormack because for me, he was the best player we had,’ said Cellino. ‘He scored 29 goals.’ Cellino has looked to his native Italy for new blood, signing goalkeeper Marco Silvestri, midfielder Tommaso Bianchi and forward Souleymane Doukara. He also promised ‘five or six’ further signings. Across Yorkshire, in a smart house in Harrogate, Bill Fotherby, former Leeds managing director, is not hopeful of the new regime. ‘Where’s the ambition there,’ he said, ‘to get rid of your best player?’ At 82, Fotherby, closely associated with the Howard Wilkinson era that brought the last title to Leeds, looks like the sort of chap who would slap you on the back and stuff a cigar in your mouth. He claims the club has been on a downhill spiral since Ridsdale took over. ‘Cellino is no different from the others,’ he said, ‘hiring a non-League manager to go into what should be a Premier League club, where’s the ambition there? Leeds has been raped of money and ambition for years now. When I was there we had 40,000 crowds every week and plans to expand to 60,000 seats. Now they’re happy if they get 20,000. ‘Leeds should be top six in the Premier League. A city this size with supporters as passionate as they are and they’ve been robbed by irresponsible owners who borrowed money on future gates. How dare they do that! It’s the fans who I feel sorry for.’
Posted on: Sun, 20 Jul 2014 10:54:09 +0000
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