The accounts, 2014-15, from Companies House

[NottinghamWhite]

From www.thecitytalking.com

Last week here I wrote about how the prospect of analysing Leeds United’s latest set of accounts sent me into a nostalgic reverie, first for the Champions League era, then for John Pemberton. Well, it made sense to me.

The actual accounts dropped on Thursday, and to my surprise were a madeleine sent from the Champions League era in which I’d sought blissful escape before. The club used to publish accounts then too; if I remember rightly, they were glossy affairs, A4 brochures packed with details about all the great things Leeds United were doing, that proved how clever I’d been to become a shareholder. Or at least they were like that for about a season, because that’s about how long the peak of the Peter Ridsdale myth lasted before the printing costs — the costs of everything, really — became too much for the club to bear.

The latest set of accounts don’t boast that way on a colour-photo-of-kids-with-the-Kop-Cat level, but Massimo Cellino’s introductory remarks do offer similar reassurances to Ridsdale’s, along with a remarkable rewriting of history. “Striker Billy Sharp was the household name which the fans craved,” apparently; I mean, he was a popular lad and he’s definitely famous in Sheffield, but…

“Further reinforcements were made in the January transfer window, with Sol Bamba and Granddi Ngoyi both arriving on loan from Palermo, while Edgar Cani joined from Catania.” Seriously, why even mention Edgar Cani?

Perhaps Massimo wanted to remind us just how good we had it during this accounting period, before getting down to the nitty gritty of the numbers. No matter how bad the accounts might look, it had to be worth it for Cani, right?

However bad the accounts might look, it’s also worth bearing in mind that Cellino has admitted to Adam Pope and Phil Hay that the next set of accounts will look worse; although they will, he assures them, still be manageable. It’s an odd admission to make given the headline spin around this set, which cover 2014/15 season, has concentrated on the drastically reduced losses, and the reorganisation of the debts to GFH; on the club being ‘fixed’.

Cellino was more candid with Emanuele Giulianelli on Thursday, telling him: “The next season has to be, finally, the one in which I will have to manage the club in my own way. In these first two seasons I have had to dedicate 90% of time, energies and money to consolidate and stabilise a nightmare financial situation.”

These numbers, then, are the halfway point of the nightmare. The problem is, they don’t show much evidence that Cellino knows how to wake Leeds United up.

That 90% of time, energies and money does appear, at first glance, to have been put to good use where GFH are concerned, because the situation with the bank that likes to say ‘Invoice payable’ is considerably better than it was in the last set of accounts, when they were still being ushered from majority to minority shareholders. They were paid £3m during this accounting period, leaving a debt payable to them of £17m; instalment payments towards a total of £3.5m will be paid annually, beginning this June, until June 2019; the remaining £13.5m owed will be paid in full if the club is promoted to the Premier League before June 2019, or on the tick from June 2019 until June 2032. Crucially, these loans are no longer accruing interest, and almost a million of interest has been paid back.

Sadly, there is a calendar correlation between the purchasing of our season tickets and the month in which the annual payments will be made, suggesting GFH have got themselves first in queue for when the Elland Road purse is at its fattest with the fans’ money; which makes this a good moment to add the necessary asterisk to Cellino’s ‘fixing’ of the situation with GFH, which is that he had plenty of opportunities to fix this situation during his takeover, by not allowing the situation to develop at all. Instead, every June, from now until 2032, GFH will gather round their banking terminals to watch the magical transaction and reminiscence about how they first felt when they realised Cellino wasn’t going to do due diligence. ‘Oh Hisham, I can still see the look on your face! I don’t know how you didn’t crack up! Hey, has anybody ever heard from that Darren guy again? What was he called, was it Darren Hay?’

It’s unfortunate that dealing with GFH has taken up so much of Cellino’s time, because while he might describe this process as ‘fixing the club’, it’d be more accurate to describe it as ‘fixing the problem he created with GFH, using our season ticket money’; and because when he diverts his attention to actually, really fixing the club — “manage the club in my own way” — he might find it even harder to fix than GFH.

The short version is that while Massimo has been digging himself out of the hole he created with Hisham and Salah, the football club itself has continued to slide into trouble. With GFH ‘fixed’, administrative expenses were reduced from £37.2m — but only to £33.3m. Operating losses were reduced from £17.8m — but only to £12.6m, around £1m a month. Losses might have reduced but lots of other things did too, things that you don’t want to reduce. Turnover was down by a million. Gate receipts were slightly up but average attendances were down. Merchandise revenue was down, commercial revenue was down.

And that was for 2014/15. Average home attendances for 2013/14 were 25,088, and for 14/15 were 24,276; so far this season we’re at 22,615, without much incentive for fans to rush through the turnstiles between now and the end of the season. The headline reduction in pre-tax losses to £2m has an awful lot to do with player trading, also known as ‘selling McCormack’; Cellino has said that losses will be worse in the accounts for 15/16, and while Sam Byram might have a big impact on the Premier League next season, he won’t have made a McCormack-sized impact on our bottom line. The wage bill, down from £20.1m in 13/14 to £17.8m in 14/15 has, according to Cellino been reduced further to around £13m for 15/16 — yet even with that extra £4m saved, losses are still going to increase. While league position — ah yes, league position —

The problem with devoting 90% effort to fixing GFH is that it was pure finance; a bank arguing with the son of a rich businessman over debt restructuring. While that has been going on, the football club has been taken to Brighton, and it has been thoroughly embarrassed. The result on Monday night shouldn’t be seen as an anomaly, but as a natural destination, and possibly a new level. Cellino might claim he has been distracted, but he’s well into his second full season here. Steve Evans has been head coach since October, and has just come through a transfer window in which he claimed to have had his president’s full backing. These days at Leeds United, it doesn’t get much more stable than that, and the football club and the football team should be showing the fruits of both their labours. Unfortunately, it is.

That football has been an afterthought to Cellino may well prove to be his downfall. If the best he can do for the club financially is to bring it to the point where it needs to sell one McCormack per season to balance the books, well, United wouldn’t be alone in the Championship if that was the case. But we don’t have another McCormack. We had a Byram, who has gone for a pittance; we have a Cook, a Mowatt, a Taylor, perhaps a Kalvin Phillips, a Lewie Coyle. But the pressures of operating losses of this size are such that we might not have time for Phillips or Coyle to develop into players we could cash in on, before we have to cash in.

Thorp Arch, where we would turn for these players, has been a major target for cost-cutting, and it says something about the staffing situation at Leeds that Paul Hart — brought in to run the Academy — has been making up the numbers on the first team bench with Evans and Raynor. Do we have the coaches, the facilities, the scouting network to bring through the next generation of players we need, either to fill first team shirts, or to sell to keep the club afloat?

Without players to sell, the solution for the shortfall falls personally on Cellino. It’s interesting in the accounts that his personal loan to the club of around £1m is the only loan to have been repaid in full, almost as if he needed the cash back. Eleonora Sport, and Eleonora Immobilaire, have loaned more, with parts of those loans turned into shares, without which the losses would look even more severe. But given that right now Cellino is effectively operating while banned by the Football League, pending his various appeals, how confident can we be in Cellino and Eleonora (the companies, not the daughter) being able to prop the club up even in the medium term?

Worth a paragraph, too, are the “number of legal claims and various claims from H M Revenue and Customs outstanding against the company” that merit just one paragraph in the accounts, a paragraph that says, “There is significant uncertainty over their outcome. For this reason no provision has been included in the balance sheet”; in other words, if the multi-million pound legal cases we knew the club was fighting with former sponsors and former employees, and the claims from HMRC that we didn’t know the club was facing, go against the club, there is no cash reserve in the loss making company to pay them. That situation is definitely worth a paragraph.

The magic bullet solution would be promotion to the Premier League; GFH would be paid off, broadcasting revenue would go through the roof, attendances would increase on the way up and sponsors would beat a path to Leeds’ door, reversing all the downturns of the past season. But every player sold to make up an operating shortfall makes the task of returning to the Premier League more difficult; in fact, it makes everything more difficult: getting fans to come and watch, getting sponsors to come and sponsor, getting kids to buy replica shirts.

Massimo Cellino, himself, has made it more difficult. For a few months this summer it didn’t matter that 90% of Cellino’s attention was on fixing GFH, because 100% of Adam Pearson’s was on fixing the football club. Capable staff were being brought in, sensible decisions were being made, United were benefiting from having an experienced head giving thorough and diligent attention to the things football clubs do. Elland Road was a brighter place after just a few months of Pearson’s influence; where would a full season have got us? Higher than 18th?

Normality lasted four months; a spell with Matt Child as executive officer was similarly brief. Paul Bell is in there now, doing something, but he’s a commercial director, not a football man. Maybe the bewildering array of drinks offers for the Bolton game are down to him (it’s two pints for £6 before the game and two for £5 after and if Leeds win a pint is free but only in the South Stand with a ‘match day meal voucher’ that is a mandatory purpose unless you’re a season ticket holder — clear?).

The magic bullet is miles away. Success is miles away. Stable finances are miles away, unless you count consistently losing north of £10m stable. However you slice it, the situation at Leeds United is that more money is going out than is coming in, players are being sold to cover the losses, as players are sold the team is getting worse, and as the team gets worse less money is coming in.

We can argue whether Massimo Cellino should be blamed for all this, at which point we have to acknowledge the job he’s done on GFH, and begin an argument about whose fault that really was (yo, Ken, we were just talking about you!).

But arguments about blame obscure the real danger the club is in if it carries on like this: losing money every season, and lacking the money or the knowledge to rebuild the deteriorating infrastructure that could raise the money to at least cover the losses.

What these accounts ought to do is bring the discussion around to Cellino to a new, sharper point. Rather than asking, ‘is he the man to blame?’, we should be asking, ‘is he the man to solve this?’

[Deleted User 2299]

I'm with Aces so used Phil Hay's take on it.

No doubt there are improvements to our accounts but they were always going to be. Just the wage cuts, staff cuts were going to have a positive effect on the figures.

Let's make no mistake, our finances are still is shocking sad state of affairs and the major improvement was due to the sale of Ross McCormack.

We could have GFH ringing in our ears until 2032!

In a nutshell, our finances need more major improvements and the best-proven way to do this is to sell our best players, exactly what Cellino has done to date. Next years figures will be boosted by the sale of Sam.

When Cellino agreed to all this debt as something HE saw as fair and right for our club, it meant he would cut our wages to the point we can't be competitive in this league, he would sell our best players, so now we have little skill/flair to watch.
When Cellino bought our club the consequences meant a severe action that would damage our fans for the next few years at least. We have to suffer the loss of our best players, we have to watch a team that can't attract top players because of wages, we are the ones who have to watch our beloved Leeds struggle in the 2nd tier. After all this, when the club has paid most of the debt off the only thing that will have changed is how much our club is worth, and that will only benefit Cellino.

The fact is, only when Cellino bought us was all the debt guaranteed, that is FACT. It's kinda like Bates/GFH/Cellino playing pass the parcel with a huge sucker sign as the prize.

This billionaire isn't doing anywhere near enough to help the club and fans, we will suffer he will get richer, I have little doubt about that.

[NottinghamWhite]

Well Steve Parkin won't be investing in anything other than his own business until his kids are grown up, the youngest is 9.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/201 ... oal-mines/
However, one of the biggest opportunities could be the chance to buy his beloved Leeds United football club. Last year he was rumoured to have bought a 51pc stake. "Whenever the ownership of Leeds comes into question, my name is mentioned because I’m successful and I’m a massive fan – I would die for it, I am serious. I used to play truant off school to watch Leeds train.”

But, he concedes: “It would be hard work with the manager. I’m not into having my mugshot over the papers. I’ve got four young children. That’s what scares me about it. At the moment I wouldn’t do it because I haven’t got time. “When the children grow up, maybe, but the youngest is nine.

“At some stage, I’ll ease off here, but if I put my money into Leeds, I’d want to being running it. I’d want to know what was going on and I haven’t got time for that right now.” Parkin insists he is devoted to Clipper.

“Nothing happens in Clipper unless I say so – I had the chance to sell it before I floated, but I can never sell it.”

Recently he sold £10m worth of shares in it, which he said was to appease investor concerns about liquidity.

The Yorkshireman takes a final slurp of his tea and says he has “big plans” for Clipper to be a “£500m or even a £1bn business by the time I retire”.

With a 10-year horizon on that, there will be no stopping Parkin from ticking another goal off his

[Deleted User 728]

From http://www.thecitytalking.com

Last week here I wrote about how the prospect of analysing Leeds United’s latest set of accounts sent me into a nostalgic reverie, first for the Champions League era, then for John Pemberton. Well, it made sense to me.

The actual accounts dropped on Thursday, and to my surprise were a madeleine sent from the Champions League era in which I’d sought blissful escape before. The club used to publish accounts then too; if I remember rightly, they were glossy affairs, A4 brochures packed with details about all the great things Leeds United were doing, that proved how clever I’d been to become a shareholder. Or at least they were like that for about a season, because that’s about how long the peak of the Peter Ridsdale myth lasted before the printing costs — the costs of everything, really — became too much for the club to bear.

The latest set of accounts don’t boast that way on a colour-photo-of-kids-with-the-Kop-Cat level, but Massimo Cellino’s introductory remarks do offer similar reassurances to Ridsdale’s, along with a remarkable rewriting of history. “Striker Billy Sharp was the household name which the fans craved,” apparently; I mean, he was a popular lad and he’s definitely famous in Sheffield, but…

“Further reinforcements were made in the January transfer window, with Sol Bamba and Granddi Ngoyi both arriving on loan from Palermo, while Edgar Cani joined from Catania.” Seriously, why even mention Edgar Cani?

Perhaps Massimo wanted to remind us just how good we had it during this accounting period, before getting down to the nitty gritty of the numbers. No matter how bad the accounts might look, it had to be worth it for Cani, right?

However bad the accounts might look, it’s also worth bearing in mind that Cellino has admitted to Adam Pope and Phil Hay that the next set of accounts will look worse; although they will, he assures them, still be manageable. It’s an odd admission to make given the headline spin around this set, which cover 2014/15 season, has concentrated on the drastically reduced losses, and the reorganisation of the debts to GFH; on the club being ‘fixed’.

Cellino was more candid with Emanuele Giulianelli on Thursday, telling him: “The next season has to be, finally, the one in which I will have to manage the club in my own way. In these first two seasons I have had to dedicate 90% of time, energies and money to consolidate and stabilise a nightmare financial situation.”

These numbers, then, are the halfway point of the nightmare. The problem is, they don’t show much evidence that Cellino knows how to wake Leeds United up.

That 90% of time, energies and money does appear, at first glance, to have been put to good use where GFH are concerned, because the situation with the bank that likes to say ‘Invoice payable’ is considerably better than it was in the last set of accounts, when they were still being ushered from majority to minority shareholders. They were paid £3m during this accounting period, leaving a debt payable to them of £17m; instalment payments towards a total of £3.5m will be paid annually, beginning this June, until June 2019; the remaining £13.5m owed will be paid in full if the club is promoted to the Premier League before June 2019, or on the tick from June 2019 until June 2032. Crucially, these loans are no longer accruing interest, and almost a million of interest has been paid back.

Sadly, there is a calendar correlation between the purchasing of our season tickets and the month in which the annual payments will be made, suggesting GFH have got themselves first in queue for when the Elland Road purse is at its fattest with the fans’ money; which makes this a good moment to add the necessary asterisk to Cellino’s ‘fixing’ of the situation with GFH, which is that he had plenty of opportunities to fix this situation during his takeover, by not allowing the situation to develop at all. Instead, every June, from now until 2032, GFH will gather round their banking terminals to watch the magical transaction and reminiscence about how they first felt when they realised Cellino wasn’t going to do due diligence. ‘Oh Hisham, I can still see the look on your face! I don’t know how you didn’t crack up! Hey, has anybody ever heard from that Darren guy again? What was he called, was it Darren Hay?’

It’s unfortunate that dealing with GFH has taken up so much of Cellino’s time, because while he might describe this process as ‘fixing the club’, it’d be more accurate to describe it as ‘fixing the problem he created with GFH, using our season ticket money’; and because when he diverts his attention to actually, really fixing the club — “manage the club in my own way” — he might find it even harder to fix than GFH.

The short version is that while Massimo has been digging himself out of the hole he created with Hisham and Salah, the football club itself has continued to slide into trouble. With GFH ‘fixed’, administrative expenses were reduced from £37.2m — but only to £33.3m. Operating losses were reduced from £17.8m — but only to £12.6m, around £1m a month. Losses might have reduced but lots of other things did too, things that you don’t want to reduce. Turnover was down by a million. Gate receipts were slightly up but average attendances were down. Merchandise revenue was down, commercial revenue was down.

And that was for 2014/15. Average home attendances for 2013/14 were 25,088, and for 14/15 were 24,276; so far this season we’re at 22,615, without much incentive for fans to rush through the turnstiles between now and the end of the season. The headline reduction in pre-tax losses to £2m has an awful lot to do with player trading, also known as ‘selling McCormack’; Cellino has said that losses will be worse in the accounts for 15/16, and while Sam Byram might have a big impact on the Premier League next season, he won’t have made a McCormack-sized impact on our bottom line. The wage bill, down from £20.1m in 13/14 to £17.8m in 14/15 has, according to Cellino been reduced further to around £13m for 15/16 — yet even with that extra £4m saved, losses are still going to increase. While league position — ah yes, league position —

The problem with devoting 90% effort to fixing GFH is that it was pure finance; a bank arguing with the son of a rich businessman over debt restructuring. While that has been going on, the football club has been taken to Brighton, and it has been thoroughly embarrassed. The result on Monday night shouldn’t be seen as an anomaly, but as a natural destination, and possibly a new level. Cellino might claim he has been distracted, but he’s well into his second full season here. Steve Evans has been head coach since October, and has just come through a transfer window in which he claimed to have had his president’s full backing. These days at Leeds United, it doesn’t get much more stable than that, and the football club and the football team should be showing the fruits of both their labours. Unfortunately, it is.

That football has been an afterthought to Cellino may well prove to be his downfall. If the best he can do for the club financially is to bring it to the point where it needs to sell one McCormack per season to balance the books, well, United wouldn’t be alone in the Championship if that was the case. But we don’t have another McCormack. We had a Byram, who has gone for a pittance; we have a Cook, a Mowatt, a Taylor, perhaps a Kalvin Phillips, a Lewie Coyle. But the pressures of operating losses of this size are such that we might not have time for Phillips or Coyle to develop into players we could cash in on, before we have to cash in.

Thorp Arch, where we would turn for these players, has been a major target for cost-cutting, and it says something about the staffing situation at Leeds that Paul Hart — brought in to run the Academy — has been making up the numbers on the first team bench with Evans and Raynor. Do we have the coaches, the facilities, the scouting network to bring through the next generation of players we need, either to fill first team shirts, or to sell to keep the club afloat?

Without players to sell, the solution for the shortfall falls personally on Cellino. It’s interesting in the accounts that his personal loan to the club of around £1m is the only loan to have been repaid in full, almost as if he needed the cash back. Eleonora Sport, and Eleonora Immobilaire, have loaned more, with parts of those loans turned into shares, without which the losses would look even more severe. But given that right now Cellino is effectively operating while banned by the Football League, pending his various appeals, how confident can we be in Cellino and Eleonora (the companies, not the daughter) being able to prop the club up even in the medium term?

Worth a paragraph, too, are the “number of legal claims and various claims from H M Revenue and Customs outstanding against the company” that merit just one paragraph in the accounts, a paragraph that says, “There is significant uncertainty over their outcome. For this reason no provision has been included in the balance sheet”; in other words, if the multi-million pound legal cases we knew the club was fighting with former sponsors and former employees, and the claims from HMRC that we didn’t know the club was facing, go against the club, there is no cash reserve in the loss making company to pay them. That situation is definitely worth a paragraph.

The magic bullet solution would be promotion to the Premier League; GFH would be paid off, broadcasting revenue would go through the roof, attendances would increase on the way up and sponsors would beat a path to Leeds’ door, reversing all the downturns of the past season. But every player sold to make up an operating shortfall makes the task of returning to the Premier League more difficult; in fact, it makes everything more difficult: getting fans to come and watch, getting sponsors to come and sponsor, getting kids to buy replica shirts.

Massimo Cellino, himself, has made it more difficult. For a few months this summer it didn’t matter that 90% of Cellino’s attention was on fixing GFH, because 100% of Adam Pearson’s was on fixing the football club. Capable staff were being brought in, sensible decisions were being made, United were benefiting from having an experienced head giving thorough and diligent attention to the things football clubs do. Elland Road was a brighter place after just a few months of Pearson’s influence; where would a full season have got us? Higher than 18th?

Normality lasted four months; a spell with Matt Child as executive officer was similarly brief. Paul Bell is in there now, doing something, but he’s a commercial director, not a football man. Maybe the bewildering array of drinks offers for the Bolton game are down to him (it’s two pints for £6 before the game and two for £5 after and if Leeds win a pint is free but only in the South Stand with a ‘match day meal voucher’ that is a mandatory purpose unless you’re a season ticket holder — clear?).

The magic bullet is miles away. Success is miles away. Stable finances are miles away, unless you count consistently losing north of £10m stable. However you slice it, the situation at Leeds United is that more money is going out than is coming in, players are being sold to cover the losses, as players are sold the team is getting worse, and as the team gets worse less money is coming in.

We can argue whether Massimo Cellino should be blamed for all this, at which point we have to acknowledge the job he’s done on GFH, and begin an argument about whose fault that really was (yo, Ken, we were just talking about you!).

But arguments about blame obscure the real danger the club is in if it carries on like this: losing money every season, and lacking the money or the knowledge to rebuild the deteriorating infrastructure that could raise the money to at least cover the losses.

What these accounts ought to do is bring the discussion around to Cellino to a new, sharper point. Rather than asking, ‘is he the man to blame?’, we should be asking, ‘is he the man to solve this?’

Very good.

But very depressing.

I'm glad someone has taken the time to sit down and go through the minutiae properly.


How anyone can still support Cellino after reading that summary is beyond me ..

[Deleted User 2299]

Some form of "fixation".
Seems to me that most the pro's support of Cellino comes in the form of attacking anti-supporters to the point its doesn't matter what Cellino does, they are more focused on what the anti's are saying/doing.

If Cellino hasn't done enough to merit fans wanting him out now, what does he have to do?
At worst the pro's should fully understand why so many want him out and let them be. It's not like the pro's can say why do you want him out, he bought McCorrmack for 11m, and Sam from West Ham for 4m, or he bought ER and TA to back their views on Cellino, in truth like it or not there is very little to shout about, so it turns into some kind of fixation towards the Anti's IMO.

Even when the accounts show the club isn't as Rosey as 1st thought, it will make little difference to some because it's stopped being about Cellino long time ago and maybe same could be said about some of the Anti's.

Like Sherk said on this forum "Divide and conquer" Cellino has divided the fans and while we're busy fixating on each other, Cellino will be happy racking up the £'s.

Just for the one FACT we all agree on the "divide", should be reason alone to want him out.

[Aces]

Nesslin, I've no idea where you are seeing all this aggressiveness aimed at anti Cellino Leeds fans, in my experience it's massively the other way round. There's little, or nothing on here, but on most of the other Leeds forums, it's practically all out war against anyone who doesn't fall in line with anti Cellino views. I don't go on Twitter, or Facebook, although I've read before that it's fairly even in abuse on those places, but I do look in on WACCOE and even the Mods on there are openly anti Cellino and encourage members in attacking and abusing those who aren't. Some of the abuse is shockingly awful, telling fellow Leeds fans to Eff Off and die, plus a multitude of almost every other discusting comments and threats.

[SiMamu]

Nesslin, I've no idea where you are seeing all this aggressiveness aimed at anti Cellino Leeds fans, in my experience it's massively the other way round. There's little, or nothing on here, but on most of the other Leeds forums, it's practically all out war against anyone who doesn't fall in line with anti Cellino views. I don't go on Twitter, or Facebook, although I've read before that it's fairly even in abuse on those places, but I do look in on WACCOE and even the Mods on there are openly anti Cellino and encourage members in attacking and abusing those who aren't. Some of the abuse is shockingly awful, telling fellow Leeds fans to Eff Off and die, plus a multitude of almost every other discusting comments and threats.

Simon O'Rourke receives some pretty nasty abuse from pro-Cellino fans on Twitter.

[Another Northern Soul]

Twitter & Facebook are possibly the two largest social media sites and are where most of the abuse towards Cellino opponents take place, and O'Rourke genuinely has received hate mail, possible death threats, in the post, and he isn't the only one. I'm not wanting to get into all of this again and I'm not antagonising Aces, but if someone goes on Waccoe and admits to deliberately winding people up then they are at some stage going to get abusive responses. And criticizing mods of any forum for their personal views on subjects is neither here nor there, they're not breaking any laws, being a moderator on most sites isn't doesn't mean they are the law or anything.

And try joining a 'pro Cellino' group on Facebook, raise a sensible point about Cellino which they can't deny and see how long you last

Am not defending people for being over-abusive and vitriolic but as there are so many members of the waccoe forum, there is going to be a fair number who can't behave, on both sides of the divide about the owner. And I know for a fact that certain Cellino fans have been so vindictive and libelous that the police have been/are involved.

[Aces]

Not saying it doesn't happen, but from my experience of a few Leeds forums, the threats and abuse comes from the anti Cellino fans and by quite some margin. TBH I've only seen fans who aren't anti Cellino fans, trying to air their views mostly in well written posts, not that I agree with them, but they should be allowed their opinion, although there are a very small minority who are as nasty as well. I think by now most of us want to see the back of him, some more than others and from my experience because far more want him out, it stands to reason that far more fans are very angry and nasty about it, like they are on WACCOE.

[Another Northern Soul]

Not saying it doesn't happen, but from my experience of a few Leeds forums, the threats and abuse comes from the anti Cellino fans and by quite some margin. TBH I've only seen fans who aren't anti Cellino fans, trying to air their views mostly in well written posts, not that I agree with them, but they should be allowed their opinion, although there are a very small minority who are as nasty as well. I think by now most of us want to see the back of him, some more than others and from my experience because far more want him out, it stands to reason that far more fans are very angry and nasty about it, like they are on WACCOE.

I get that and I know what point you were making, I was just pointing out that Facebook and twitter are the two places where the vast majority of the abuse you mention takes place, and you don't frequent either of them which explains why you won't see it happening