QUOTE(Duke Red @ Sep 28 2007, 12:51 PM)
The one game against Leeds I will always remember ended up with the following scoreline:
Mark Viduka 4 - Liverpool 0. I was watching the game in Kota Kinabalu at the time and it was a painful defeat.
It was 4 - 3 mate, with Viduka scoring all four goals and declared, that wasn't my best game.Mark Viduka 4 - Liverpool 0. I was watching the game in Kota Kinabalu at the time and it was a painful defeat.
To be honest, many of us felt sorry for leedds, but how many of you know what really went wrong? Leeds' story was an eppitomy of what was wrong in football these days, they borrowed heavily against future success. Meaning taking unsecure loans with very high interest in anticipation of CL qualification and progress. When they had a few bust ups, started off with the Lee Bowyer & Jonathan Woodgate racism trial. Followed by a few other bust ups between players, as well as David O'Leary selling his story of the handling of the Racism saga to the newspaper, everything suddenly fell apart. It was a sad sight nevertheless. How a CL semifinalist went down on such a downward spiral fall that it would scared the best stuntman.
I used to enjoy the football they play, they have this no fear attitude about it, how they would just go and have a go at the opposition, without fearing who they are and while giving respect to the past achievements of the opposition, their approach to the game was akin to "Alright, you lots did well in the past and had a great team, we don't care, if you want our respect, you must come here and play us off the park and perhaps we will acknowledge it at the end of the game." It was great to watch.
Chelsea doing a Leeds? At the moment, I don't see that happening. At the moment, I thinkChelsea is the only debt free club with deep enough pockets from the owner. If he decided to sell, they are still pretty good for a few season yet before anything llike that can happen. Peter Kenyon, while hated pretty much everywhere he goes, is a very good business manager. He'd find ways to keep the club afloat, only thing would be the club have to sell off a few players who are choking the wage bill, that's all.
Current teams that is dangered to "emulate" Leeds in my honest opinion would be Spurs and Man U. This is without looking at their financial reports. Simply because both teams spent heavily and if there's no success on the field, or heaven forbids, crash out of Europe early, the board will have to undertake higher interest payments and that would put more strains on the financial of the club. Especially Man U who spent heavily in the summer while having a few hundred millions pound's debt deom Glazer buying the club. Howevcer, having said all that, I don't think the Leeds' situation will happen again, simply because after seeing what heppened to them, many of the chairman wised up and did not take as much risk. Let's hope for football sake it did not.
Sep 28 2007, 02:24 PM

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