Leeds’ debts grow bigger than dreams
Selling Fowler will rake in around £7 million to chip away at the £77.8 million of debt which has seen Leeds United's share price plummet from 18p on flotation to 4.87p yesterday.
But the striker's exit says much more about a club which, little more than a year ago, dreamed of a place in the Champions League sun but now must rely on the coaching talents of manager Terry Venables to keep it from an ignominious drop into the Nationwide League.
It says Leeds have abandoned all hopes of rivalling Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool and Chelsea as a genuine big-hitter in the English Premiership and jettisoned all chance of trophies in a frantic quest for survival.
It also tells Venables that the club, at which he complained things "are not quite as they were in the brochure" when he arrived in the summer, are prepared to strip any asset, sell any player, do any deal, to appease nervous investors and vexed shareholders.
Already they have sold Rio Ferdinand to Manchester United, though the £12 million profit they made could not exactly be deemed bad business. Robbie Keane then went to Tottenham and just this past week Olivier Dacourt has joined Roma and Lee Bowyer West Ham though while the latter's departure was financially flawed it was imperative in ridding the club of its most malevolent influence.
If it's not nailed down at Elland Road these days the suspicion is that it is up for grabs. Some would call that a reordering of investments. Others might contend it was a closing down sale.
The bottom line is that if you were looking for the way not to run a football club at a time when the game is not short of financial incompetence then the Yorkshire club has provided the perfect example these past few years.
How else can you explain the fall from the heady anticipation of a European Cup semi-final two years ago and leading the Premiership 12 months ago to today's position of 12th in the Premiership with a relegation battle still a possibility and Venables' hands tied by the need to settle crippling debts. Much of the demise must be laid at the door of chairman Peter Ridsdale, whose vision of taking Leeds into a stratosphere occupied by United and Arsenal skewed his judgment in allowing a rookie manager in David O'Leary to spend £100 million of borrowed money.
Some might call that ambition, most would deem it a reckless gamble. If O'Leary had delivered a regular place in the Champions League the gamble just might have paid off. But then O'Leary was callow and inexperienced and while for a time his team produced high-octane entertainment, which saw Leeds pressing at the top of the Premiership, the foundations were always shaky.
The legacy is no money, too many ordinary players on extraordinary salaries and apparently a malaise within certain elements of the playing staff which endures if the sight of striker Mark Viduka refraining from shaking hands with team-mates when substituted on Saturday is anything to go by.
So much about Leeds suggests performing for the club is no longer a source of passion or pride. It is to the credit of Venables, who initially misjudged the extent of the task, that in recent troubled weeks he has stabilised the playing side of the club with a string of victories before Saturday's defeat at Manchester City.
But the millstone of debt remains and the best the future holds would appear to be an anonymous position in the mid-reaches of the Premiership.
Why on earth would Fowler want to stay at such a club when he could cross the Pennines and join the Kevin Keegan Manchester adventure with City moving into a new stadium, cash available for reinforcements and joie de vivre guaranteed, especially as a striker when working with football's most charismatic character?
A club unloading its finest stars in knockdown deals inevitably generates seething resentment. And the imminent exit of Fowler is the price Leeds must pay for allowing their debts to grow so much bigger than even their dreams.
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