Bates vows legal action if Leeds is sold

Leeds chairman Ken Bates has vowed to take legal action if the club is sold to a rival bidder.

Leeds' administrators KPMG put the club up for sale on Friday night after Bates' buy-back deal was challenged in the High Court by the Inland Revenue.

KPMG have set a deadline of 5pm on Monday to receive offers for the club with two consortia, who have already lodged separate bids, believed to be holding talks about joining forces and mounting a 'super-bid'.

But Bates has warned he will not go out without a fight and confirmed he had re-submitted his offer for the club.

The 75-year-old told Yorkshire Radio: "Our bid is the original deal that was done in the meeting of creditors when we placed the Company Voluntary Agreement (CVA) on June 1.

"We have amended it twice to try and meet the Inland Revenue's objections and now we've withdrawn the conditionality of it, so it's now unconditional."

Bates insists the threat of bankruptcy still hangs over Elland Road and that administrators KPMG could be forced to close the club down if nobody steps forward to pay the day-to-day running costs.

And he claims rivals bidders, local property developer Simon Morris and London-based Redbus Group headed by Simon Franks, had made offers they could struggle to meet.

Bates said: "We believe in fact our offer is valid. Therefore it should be the only one to be accepted.

"So there's a problem and a possibility that if the administrator goes down another route then there could be further legal battles.

"After all, we haven't come all this way over the last two-and-half years, borrowed and spent all that money, got the club turned round, got rid of all the bad organisation that the previous regimes left in place to go out without a fight.

"We honestly believe we have the future of the club at heart and it can go forward under our stewardship."

The Inland Revenue are owed £7.7m (€11.4) by Leeds, who have total debts in excess of £35m (€51.6m).

Under the terms of Bates' initial 1p-in-the-pound buy-back deal the Inland Revenue were set to receive just £77,000 (€113,683).

Bates increased his offer to 8p in the pound, but his last-ditch offer to head off the Inland Revenue's legal challenge proved in vain.

On Friday the High Court postponed a decision on the Inland Revenue's appeal until September 3.

Bates added: "At the moment it's a very unhappy situation, it's unnecessary. At the moment we are precluded from signing players. We're just in limbo.

He added: "It must all be very worrying for the fans and it's very worrying for the staff. They're just ordinary people wondering if they've got a job or not.

"If it's not funded by someone the administrators will have to close the club down because they're not allowed to, if you like, trade and borrow money, so the answer would be bankruptcy."

Earlier today former Leeds chairman Gerald Krasner, an expert in insolvency law, told BBC Radio Five Live the successful bid for the club would be between £10m (€14.7m) and £15m (€22.1m).

Krasner said: "Whoever buys it will have a club free of debt apart from football debt and therefore I think we'd be talking £5m (€7.38m)-plus.

"We're not in the Premier League any more and there needs to be a lot of internal investment.

"This is money for the creditors left behind rather than buying the club. The club will need funding for the season which is probably £10-15m."

Krasner said he was unaware whether former Hull chairman Adam Pearson, a director at Elland Road until 2001, and multi-millionaire internet entrepreneur Pete Wilkinson were poised to make a move for the club.

Krasner added: "I haven't been contacted by Adam Pearson but in the last six weeks I've been speaking with representatives of three or four consortia.

"One of the conversations we've all had is whether two of them get together and put in a super-bid, and that is a still a possibility."