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Former Chelsea chairman Ken Bates has denied that he has agreed to put in £10m to save Leeds United. Sebastian Sainsbury, great-grandson of the supermarket chain founder, said that he had held a meeting with Bates last week at a London hotel where Bates had apparently offered to invest the money in return for a 51 per cent stake in the club and the position of chairman. Bates denied any knowledge of the meeting: 'I've been linked with so many clubs that this will take the total to 38. I know nothing about it. The only thing keeping me busy is unpacking my shopping from the supermarket.' A banker turned restauranteur, Sainsbury has been insisting for months that he has £25m available to sort out the problems at Leeds. But the Leeds board has got fed up with his claims and is talking to a consortium of local businessmen led by Norman Stubbs. The urgency of finding a solution is growing with a number of repayment deadlines looming. The board has reduced the overall debt from £103m to £25m since taking over last March, but has constant cashflow problems. A £1.2m payment to the Inland Revenue, deferred from before Christmas, is owed, while a payment to bondholders is due next month. The pension funds that bankrolled the dreams of former chairman Peter Ridsdale are due staged performance-related payments over the next 17 years. Although the sale of Elland Road enabled the repayment of a loan to property developer Jack Petchey, the £1.25m annual rent is another burden. The board wants to avoid administration, not just because the club would receive a ten point penalty from the Football League, but because director loans of £4.7m secured against their homes and businesses would be placed at the back of the creditor queue. Meanwhile, somehow Leeds managed to come top of the FA table for payments to agents between July 1 and 31 December last year, with an outlay of £1.6m.
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