Quite agree that there are risks in Option 1 Mark, and distressed football clubs have not always attracted the best investors for the good of the football club as we can well attest ourselves.
However, my inclination is not to look at Friday as Bates v Morris (as I don't see how Morris can 'win' on Friday, only frustrate Bates). Friday is about deciding Bates' future. If Bates doesn't get his plan through, certain clearly not associated creditors will need to make a judgment call about whether to cut their losses and walk away. A failure of Bates to get his bid through would also open a new window of opportunity to other parties who may well then emerge. Morris, I suspect, isn't trying to 'win' on Friday - just make people see there is another way, and avoid creditors sleepwalking into acceptance. Someone (may have been you Mark) also looked at paying 1p in the pound as being the altruistic approach to saving Leeds Utd. I suspect the small businessmen, Leeds council tax payers (debt to council), national tax payers (HMRC) and St John's Ambulance, who will lose 99% of their perfectly decent and valid outstandings, would find altruistic an interesting choice of word. -----Original Message----- From: Mark Humphries [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2007 11:59 AM To: Woolmer, David (F&CM AMS); [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [email protected] Subject: RE: [LU] Best interests for next season Dave, you are assuming the process of Option 1 would get us a management team that would give us a proper and concrete grounding. How would your opinion change if the eventual buyers following option 1 were some pure property speculators? I suspect it's those kind of people who could afford to come up with the best financially attractive bid for the administrators. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 30 May 2007 10:40 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [email protected] Subject: RE: [LU] Best interests for next season Couldn't disagree more. Short termism of the worst kind. Option 1 - have a protracted potentially messy battle but which ultimately can get us ownership and management that can give us a proper and concrete grounding for truly rebuilding our club, albeit with a negative short term impact on planning for next season. Option 2 - stick with what we've got so they can plan for next season, even though existing management of the club have accumulated some remarkable (in volume and lack of accountability) losses, taken us into administration and our worst ever league status and still remain opaque as to who ultimately owns and funds us, in the hope (not supported at all by past behaviour) that such management may be able to be bought out at a later date. Has to be Option 1 every time. Cannot believe for a second that if Bates wins the vote, thus has a relatively unencumbered club, with the options to buy the land in tact, but with debts to 'repay' to companies who subsidised the club to a very large tune, he would walk away if just offered 10m. The current 'back me or your club dies' posturing smacks of rather unpleasant desperation and no intelligent fan will buy into it. Surely??? -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of thecasses Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2007 11:31 AM To: Mark Humphries; 'The Leeds List' Subject: Re: [LU] Best interests for next season IMHO - 100% spot on ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mark Humphries" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "'The Leeds List'" <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2007 7:17 PM Subject: [LU] Best interests for next season It appears that if Bates offer is rejected or accepted narrowly (and thereby attracting an appeal or whatever) we would remain in admin limbo even longer. Which would mean no transfer activity. Would it not be in the best interests of the football club to vote Bates through so that we can get a squad together for preseason training? The last thing we want now with the unavoidable overhaul of the playing staff is to miss out on all or part of preseason together. I read somewhere that Bates is hanging on for a £10m payout, wouldn't it be better for all these concerned fans who want to buy the club to therefore let Bates win and afterwards give him his £10m to walk away? The improved offer to the creditors aint doing LUFC any favours, it just means the creditors get more money. Or am I missing something? _______________________________________________ the Leeds List is an unmoderated mailing list and the list administrators accept no liability for the personal views and opinions of contributors. 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