McKenzie sees rosy future for troubled Leeds
No, the professor has not gone nuts, but he used the analogy to describe his hopes for the financial turnaround of a club that yesterday declared a record £49.5m loss for a British club for the year ending June 30.
Financial experts believe Leeds will go bust before the season is out, but McKenzie has poured scorn on such a doom-laden notion.
The right moves are being made.
Allan Leighton, a Leeds fan who is the front-man to ARM Holdings Group, has injected £4.4m into the club in return for shares.
McKenzie is also close to brokering a deal with the club's two major creditors, the American bondholders who gave Leeds £60m dependent on future season ticket sales, and a company known as Registered European Football Finance Limited (REFF).
Leeds currently owe REFF £21.3m. The money was used to buy players in recent seasons, with five or six of the present squad on such a 'hire purchase' scheme, including Mark Viduka.
But talks are well advanced, with McKenzie confirming: "It's very much a stepping stone exercise.
"Two years ago we were struggling to swim against the current. Now we are currently treading water. In a year's time I hope to have one foot on the sand, which is where we want to be as quickly as possible. Following that. I would hope to be right on the sand running with a beautiful blonde."
"It's just an analogy, but if you take those four steps, the reality of each is you can only do it by restructuring and refinancing one step at a time."
Perhaps unsurprisingly, McKenzie could not resist a swipe at the former regime run by Peter Ridsdale.
Borrowing a phrase previously used by Ridsdale, he said: "Leeds United lived the dream and I inherited the nightmare.
"It was clear the business was heading for trouble at a vast rate of knots. Peter Ridsdale had to some degree attempted to cut costs, but clearly not enough.
"In essence, all I could do in the first three months (of my reign), is run with where we are. The loss of £49.5m was an inevitability based on a revenue stream which in no way matched expenditure.
"It reflects the fact it was geared up for the Champions League, although even then you can calculate from the figures that if we had gained £25m from being in there we would still have made a substantial loss."
The latest accounts, though, do not mean McKenzie will have to sell when the transfer window re-opens in January, although manager Peter Reid can expect nothing to help strengthen either.
"Unless a player is seeking to move then we don't have to sell," asserted McKenzie, who claims to have had reassurances this week from Viduka's agent that the striker wants to stay.
"It's not our intention to use January's transfer window to ease these financial figures. We won't be doing it at this stage to get money off the balance sheet.
"But then if nobody goes, I don't see us being a significant buyer in the transfer window."
But McKenzie is at least hoping a team currently one off the bottom in the Premier League will start to perform to their true potential and can help in his plans by staving off the prospect of relegation, which would be disastrous but would not be fatal.
"We have a highly talented, extremely expensive team that is not performing well on a regular basis," added McKenzie, who is to step down to a non-executive role as he will be assisted in his task by former Chelsea chief executive Trevor Birch as from Monday.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
