Cash flow pressures are mounting at Leeds as a decision is awaited from the football authorities on whether the takeover by controversial Italian Massimo Cellino can go ahead.
Current owners GFH Capital borrowed money to pay the wage bill for January and another payroll is due in a couple of weeks. Moreover, Leeds don’t have a home game, which could generate some cash flow, until March 8th.
Cash flow pressures are mounting at Leeds as a decision is awaited from the football authorities on whether the takeover by controversial Italian Massimo Cellino can go ahead.
Current owners GFH Capital borrowed money to pay the wage bill for January and another payroll is due in a couple of weeks. Moreover, Leeds don’t have a home game, which could generate some cash flow, until March 8th.
Cellino can probably pass the ‘owners and directors’ test as his conviction for fraud, for which he received a suspended sentence, is spent. He does face an embezzlement charge, but processes in the Italian courts can take years. Many years I remember the brother of a friend of mine, who had been a naughty boy with his machine gun, eventually being let out because no one could get the case before the courts.
The Football League realise that if Cellino can get through their test, almost anyone can. Ronnie Briggs would have qualified if he had any loot left. In order to minimise the embarrassment, the football authorities want to be seen as thorough as possible, but that sets up problems for Leeds. Probably they will eventually give approval ‘just in time’.
Leeds is a club that has been messed up by successive owners, denying it the chance to realise its Premiership potential. It’s a dilemma for Leeds fans as Cellino looks like another of the bombastic egoists found too often in football, but he does have the readies and no one else does, at least to the tune of £33.5m which is the reported price.