Quote ="Saint Simon"Going into administration can be a great way of clearing your debts. Ken Bates bought Leeds for a nomimal sum plus their debts which were in the tens of millions, he took them into administration almost straight away and all debts were wiped out, he then bought the club off the administrators for £1 so had the club he wanted with very little debt. A nice bit of business.'"
I have no time for Mr Bates but this is not quite true.
He bought a 50% stake in Leeds for £10Million in Jan 2005 when their debts were estimated to be approaching £50 (they had sold their ground and training ground to reduce debts from the £100M mark!)
In 2007 he put Leeds into admin with debts of £35M. After a lengthy battle with HMRC (which Donny will also face unless they pay their debts in full) he bought Leeds back at a rate of about 7.5p in the £. Quite a bit more than £1.
As with all clubs in admin it is the small suppliers and that suffer, they can't afford to take a perentage of the money that they are owed. Hopefully it can be sorted out.
As a fan of a football team that almost ceased to exist (Leeds were that close) and as a fan of Gateshead Thunder (a team that did cease to exist but for different reasons) I hope for the sake of all Donny fans they can sort out their issues and that they still have a rugby team to watch.
