The full details of the club’s annual accounts were published by Companies House yesterday, and it seems that Ken Bates will be using some of the season ticket sales for the next two seasons to fund his re-development of the East Stand.

The club’s results for the 2010-11 financial year show that Leeds have taken out a £5million loan towards the of £7million cost of building work on the East Stand, though it doesn’t say who this loan is from. The work includes 24 new corporate boxes, five lounges and a club museum, and the bad news is that this is merely the first phase of a larger redevelopment project.

So will more money from season tickets be syphoned off to pay for the later stages of this project in the years following 2013/14? And what happens if they money raised through season ticket sales is a lot less than Mr.Bates expects? With so many fans saying they won’t renew (as they object to paying Premiership prices to watch mid-table Championship football) how will the loan be repaid?

The obvious assumption is that the amount of money being soaked up by these projects will be at the expense of the funds made available to Neil Warnock to rebuild the squad that has looked substandard an disinterested in far too many home games during the past few months. When Warnock took the job he was promised a reasonable amount of investment in the playing side, so he might decide to walk if Mr.Bates doesn’t keep his side of the bargain.

Shaun Harvey denied that the team would suffer when he spoke to the Yorkshire Post. “We believe that the investment in the East Stand is a prudent project and will create revenue streams going forward, creating additional funds to make us stronger on the pitch. The aim of the club remains promotion to the Premier League.” In other words, they reckon that once it’s all finished the corporate income will leave us with a tidy profit, but the suits will only want to bring their clients to Elland Road if they can associate with a winning team.

It was also revealed that a new class of ‘Preference Shares’ have been created, which have been sold for £3.2 Million, again to persons unknown. These have a guaranteed return of £4 Million, which will be payable when the club is sold or liquidated (in which case these will have priority over the ordinary shares in the queue to be paid off from the club’s remaining assets) or if the majority shareholder (that’s Ken Bates) decides to buy them back.

As with so many other issues surrounding Leeds United’s finances the reasons why these shares have been issued are unclear. It’s very possible that Bates has allocated these shares to himself, to guarantee a tidy profit in the event of someone buying him out. Could it be that he’s considering the possibility of selling the club fairly soon? We live in hope.

Photo: Action Images

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