Leeds United hoped to agree a stay of execution with creditors on Monday after it emerged that a group of local businessmen were ready to buy the English Premiership club for £25-million.
Chief executive Trevor Birch is said to be hopeful over the package, but wants more time to examine it.
Leeds, with debts totalling £105-million and with cash assets of only £12-million, need to secure at least £5-million to avoid going into administration.
The consortium is said to come from Leeds’s Jewish community but is not linked with former deputy chairperson Allan Leighton.
The club say ”constructive talks are continuing” with the group but the negotiations are being conducted through solicitors and advisers to the group, and not the consortium directly.
The club’s official website reported that ”negotiations with the Yorkshire group are at an advanced stage and the likelihood is that Trevor Birch will be granted more time by the creditors to conclude the deal before the end of the week”.
Leighton and Bahrain’s Sheikh Abdulrahman bin Mubarak al-Khalifa have both been linked with a takeover bid, although the latter’s credentials have been questioned.
Leeds claimed they had ”not received any satisfactory evidence from Sheikh al-Khalifa that funds exist to fulfil any proposal currently under discussion between him and the company”.
Unless a takeover bid is successful, Leeds may have to sell a player before the end of this month’s transfer window — with Alan Smith, Paul Robinson, James Milner and Mark Viduka all linked with moves recently.
The club has also asked the players to defer up to 30% of their wages.
Leeds originally faced a January 19 deadline to avoid going into administration. Creditors agreed to extend that to January 26 but that deadline also now looks set to be delayed.
There is also the possibility of a further two-week extension to February 6, but only if certain financial conditions are met.
Leeds are bottom of the Premier League and relegation from the top flight would translate into an estimated £20-million to £25-million loss in revenue.
But Leeds would not be penalised if they went into administration, despite plans for the Premier League board this week to discuss a proposal to deduct nine points in future.
Three seasons ago, Leeds were riding the crest of a wave having reached the European Champions League semifinals.
Peter Ridsdale, Leeds United chairperson at the time, had sanctioned then manager David O’Leary’s £67-million spending spree on players between December 1998 and November 2001 after talking three big banks — Schroders, UBS Warburg and Jupiter Asset Management — into approving a 25-year bond worth £60-million to buy new players.
But everything went wrong as form slumped and Leeds sacked O’Leary and subsequent managers Terry Venables and Peter Reid in an attempt to stop the rot.
However, the club’s financial plight only made the task of repairing the sinking soccer side worse as they were forced into selling off more than £60-million-worth of players to try to keep afloat.
The biggest to go was Rio Ferdinand, for whom Manchester United paid £30-million.
Leeds lost about £50-million last year and Allan Leighton, former deputy chairperson to Ridsdale who approved that spending spree, recently quit the board to form a syndicate to buy the club.
But he has yet to come up with a deal that satisfies the creditors.
Birch hopes the new bid from local businessmen will save the club. — Sapa-AFP