‘Only the new stadium can bring us the big signings’

Feb 16 2008 by Mark Bloom, South Wales Echo

PETER RIDSDALE ON...

LANGSTON
The Langston court case is one of the downsides of the whole season and all I know is that we have a court date in the second week of March.I can’t say what is happening behind the scenes, but what I can say is we are not sitting around waiting for that date to come around. There have been attempts to resolve it and we are working tirelessly to get it resolved before it actually comes to that date. The Langston case is clearly unhelpful at this time. We have a big enough task to run the club financially before we move to the new stadium without this distraction.We had no money whatsoever to spend in the January transfer window. We have had premium debentures in our budget for this year which we thought would make things a little easier this year but nobody will give us that money because of the ongoing Langston case.

TRANSFER WINDOW
If supporters are frustrated that we did not dip into the January transfer window, please tell me how much they will contribute to the transfer pot because the basic fact is that we don’t have a transfer pot with any money in it.It makes me laugh that I was criticised six years ago by everybody for spending money that they believed Leeds United did not have, now I am being criticised for not spending money that we don’t have. It may have frustrated people in January, but it is like looking in a shop window at something and having no money in the bank to buy it. You can’t buy what you can’t afford.Dave and I would have loved to have brought players to this club in January but we couldn’t afford to do it.

DEBTS
We have to balance the books every season which is very difficult, because as a club we turn over between £8m and £9m.And to compete at this level you are looking at a wage bill of £6m to £7m. But at the moment our wage bill is around £4m, and this is where player sales make up the difference.We had to bridge that gap by selling Chris Gunter and Steve MacLean to make up for the shortfall. It was as simple as that.Under the circumstances I think we have done very well indeed, because we had massive debts to pay off. We have put money into the stadium and we had to pay off the Inland Revenue creditors and local creditors who helped design the stadium. We owed a lot of money to a lot of people and they have been very patient.

I MADE MISTAKES
Yes, I made mistakes in the past, for which some people are still blaming me years later. But I’m not going to make those mistakes again.I can’t change the past and if people are still criticising me for Leeds United so be it. I think most of the Cardiff City supporters would have settled for five years in the Premiership and two European finals. But when I do leave this club it will be in a far healthier financial state than when I first came here.