IT WAS with a characteristically bombastic and half-cocked rant that Ken Bates dismissed the concerns of Leeds United fans during the club’s 2007 administration. His behaviour has continued to baffle and anger supporters ever since, but such is the club’s stranglehold through the Members Club, LUTV and Yorkshire Radio that their voices are increasingly peripheral to that of its chairman.

However, a more recent comment that “a football club is a property business that hosts a football match 25 days a year and is shut for the other 340 days” has meant that not even the club’s own veneer can mask the mediocrity of its ideas. The dawning realisation is that if Bates has his way, Leeds United will be overwhelmingly focused on those who do not care for the club, marginalising even further those of us that do.

On Saturday, The Square Ball magazine’s latest issue featuring TBG’s centre spread “Visit Beeston” became this season’s biggest seller. If you’re quick, you’ll pick up a copy of “the only publication about our team that we’re likely to get anything even approaching the truth” when Oldham Athletic visit Elland Road tonight.

“I think they’re beginning to understand me,” Bates reckons. If that were truly the case, there probably wouldn’t be queues of fans imaginatively pledging hard-earned cash to publicly humiliate him. Be in no doubt that we are not merely consumers of Ken Bates’ Leeds United narrative, for this football club’s story is our own. Let’s take to our keyboards and printers or whatever else is at hand, clear our throats and tell it the only way it should be told.

Click here for FREE “Visit Beeston” avatar and stickers.

See also: Leeds United, Visit Beeston | 6 Comments »