Leeds posts record losses for a UK football club

Leeds United, title contenders only two seasons ago and now languishing in the basement of the Premiership alongside Leicester City, have sunk to a new low today after posting record annual losses for a UK football club.

According to its annual figures, Leeds notched up pre-tax losses of £49.5 million for the year ended June 30. Through the sale of players, good housekeeping and addressing merchandise and stock hold issues, the club said that it had managed to keep debts "steady" at £78 million.

Despite the gloomy figures, Chairman John McKenzie was buoyant about the future, saying that the club had "slowly begun to turn the corner".

He went on to predict that next season Leeds would "break even at an operating level before interest and player trading". However, for the club to achieve that position Mr McKenzie said that it would be necessary to take "strong measures and cut costs".

The club said that it had been "attacking the overheads" and had identified annualised cost savings of nearly £20 million per annum.

The club also announced that Trevor Birch would taken over as the new Chief Executive from November 1, at which time John McKenzie will become non-executive chairman "working two or three days a week concentrating on the strategy of the business, the restructuring and refinancing of the operation".

On his decision to become a non-executive chairman, Mr McKenzie said: "Rest assured I would not be taking the step that is of stepping back to be a non-executive chairman if I did not have the upmost confidence in Trevor Birch and Neil Robson and the belief that Leeds United had not begun to turn the corner."

Leeds United said that negotiations with two creditors, the bondholders and REFF Gerling, were well advanced and that there was a cash injection to be made of £4.4 million equally between Alan Leighton and ARM Holdings Group.

(gmcg)