Leeds tell bidders to put up or shut up

LEEDS managing director David Richmond has urged potential investors to put up or shut up as the club prepares for life outside the Premiership.

Richmond has slapped a one-week deadline on takeover bids and insisted no good can come of further protracted speculation about the make-up of the Elland Road boardroom.

Millionaire Leeds fan Steve Parkin has been linked with a buyout but Richmond said talk of any deal remained pure conjecture.

Richmond said: “By the time we have a board meeting next week I think we will have to ask that if you have still not provided us with proof, then please go away.

“We have not seen the colour of anyone’s money and nor have we seen a business plan which suggests anybody else can take the club forward in any better way.

“We have said from day one of being here that as custodians of Leeds United, if someone can come in and conclude a deal in the best interests of the club we will not stand in their way. But they have got to come in and show us, or else go away.”

Richmond will meet with caretaker manager Eddie Gray again next week to discuss his future.

Richmond confirmed that no decision had been reached about the continuation or otherwise of Gray’s near 40 year association with the club.

And while he confirmed the inevitable fact that bids had already begun to arrive for the club’s top players he said: “We have got five under-21s in the first-team squad at the moment and it is absolutely our intention to keep hold of that young, affordable talent.

“We will bring in eight or nine new signings this summer and with the nucleus of the squad we will have left I absolutely believe we will able to mount a challenge at the very top end of the Nationwide League.”