After the Leeds United official site criticised anyone and everyone bar themselves yesterday, their first team manager Dennis Wise has been the latest person in the Leeds camp to make wide-sweeping accusations about his fellow League One clubs.
Wise has accused the League One chairmen of voting against Leeds purely to get a 15 point head start on one of their rivals, completely ignoring the fact that 24 League Two sides and 24 Championship sides could have easily overturned the 23 League One sides voting if that had been the only motive. Wise has said of the vote outcome:
"If you look at the teams in our division I'm sure they probably wouldn't have voted for us if I'm being totally honest. I think a lot of them will go home and deep down inside will know they haven't been fair. Some will have done it for their own reasons and probably not the right reasons. Everyone wants to get a head start, so 23 teams in our league have got a very good head start on us."
Wise suggested the League and its member clubs somehow had ulterior motives for wanting to deduct his side points, overlooking the fact that the Football League gave administrators KPMG a chance to bring Leeds back within the League's regulations without punishment, only for KPMG to refuse. Despite that Wise believed there was a hidden agenda:
"It's laughable. Not only have they taken my arms and legs off, now they've cut my bollocks off as well. It's just not funny at all. We'd like to know deep down the real reasons. I'm disappointed with the whole thing. Minus 15 points. We have to get 106 points to win the league, 92 points to get in the play-offs and 70 points to stay up. Lovely. Thank you very much."
There is some confusion in terms of how many teams voted against Leeds yesterday. Early reports suggested that the voting was 54-16 in favour of the Football League (with Bury not present), but this morning's Yorkshire Post claims the League Chairmen voted 64-5 with one spoilt vote. There is currently a list circulating around the internet claiming to know the 16 clubs that voted in favour of Leeds, but the Yorkshire Post report appears to go against this, claiming that Gillingham who appeared on the internet list of 16 clubs had openly been interviewed after the meeting expressing their support for the Football League's decision.
Amongst all this finger pointing, the one area of blame that Leeds seem unable to look at is themselves and administrators KPMG. After yesterday's headline, the Leeds official site has followed up with an "Us Versus Them" headline in their coverage of Wise's remarks. Perhaps their true motive is to try and unite their supporters behind Chairman Ken Bates in a Millwallesque "No-one likes us, we don't care" attitude to the forthcoming season.
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10 August 2007 : 
