Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Doom and gloom



Doom and gloom all round at Elland Road as Leeds lost 2-0 away at Sunderland and now find themselves five points adrift of safety. Added to which Gus Poyet the assistant manager got sent off.

Dennis Wise was quoted on Radio Leeds as saying that he was not concerned and hope to bring in a couple of new faces during the transfer window. Rumours are that his transfer kitty may be as big as four million but I wonder whether he will have to let a couple of players go as well. Healy and Kilgallon seem the most likely to achieve a significant transfer fee. Whatever happens with regard to players leaving it is absolutely essential that Wise is a able to bring a few new quality players in as soon as the transfer window opens. If we can get them bedded in during January so much the better.

Other matters also appear to be distracting attention from the urgent business of attempting to stay in the Championship. Rumours have been circulating that Elland Road has been sold to new owners. The ground was originally sold to sold to Manchester businessman Jacob Adler in November, 2004, for around £8.5m with a 25-year lease for Leeds, with an option of being able to rent the stadium for an additional quarter of a century, and a buy-back provision for the club. The real identity of the new owners is not known although the club have now announced that the sale took place in March 2005 to Teak Trading Corporation, a company based in the British Virgin Islands. Allegedlyy this may be a front for a certain gentleman not unconnected with Leeds United to own the ground and take the rent from the club

Meanwhile Reading twice came from behind to record a historic away draw at Chelsea. I watched the game on Sky and I can honestly say that a draw was probably a fair result. Jose Mourinho even thought that it was a fair result so perhaps Reading deserved to nick all three points!

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