FL CEO Shaun Harvey Comments On Leeds Ownership Situation

Former Leeds United CEO and current Football League Chief Executive Shaun Harvey has commented on the ownership of the club by Massimo Cellino, who initially failed the Football League’s own Owners and Directors Test, as reported by The Telegraph.

Harvey was commenting at the return of Coventry City to the Ricoh Arena, where they played tonight for the first time since negotiating a deal to return. Coventry won 1-0 against Gillingham.

When asked about Leeds, his former club, Harvey said: “Leeds fans at this moment in time think Cellino is an improvement on what they’ve seen previously.

“Ultimately all he has done is brought some financial stability to a situation, and signed 15 players. While fans may be wary, they are still there.’’

Harvey had been involved with the previous three regimes at Leeds before Cellino’s takeover. He joined the club as part of the Yorkshire consortium, which bought the club shortly before relegation. He then stayed at the club when Ken Bates took over the club, and took a key role in his management structure.

The CEO also took a role in the deal with Gulf Finance House, and maintained his place on the board under them, before leaving to take up his position at the Football League.

GFH left the club in a precarious financial situation, with rumours of administration swirling. Cellino’s takeover was ultimately granted on appeal, and the Italian has since run the club.

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Editor

27 thoughts on “FL CEO Shaun Harvey Comments On Leeds Ownership Situation”

  1. Shaun harvey doesn’t even have the right to comment about the situation at Leeds United,the mans a baffoon,a puppet a yes man for that idiot Bates who took our club to administration and league 1 and even if Cellinos makes a complete mess of Leeds he’ll only of done half the damage that Bates and Harvey did !!

  2. Compared to what Harvey did, I would think Cellino is a dream come true. Cellino is a man with a will of steel intent on transforming Leeds United and restoring their pride as one of the greatest clubs in the world.

  3. The thoughts of Chairman Harvey? Who on earth would give any credence whatsoever to any “thoughts” elucidated by a total clown who has deliberately steered clubs into no less than THREE administrations (once at Leeds, and twice at Bradford). What on earth possessed the Football League when they appointed Shaun? One can only assume they needed a yes man, and that is probably the one area of club administration in which Mr harvey is suitably qualified and experienced.

  4. Harvey was just dreadful for Leeds in my view! Cellino, “just brought financial stabikity to the club and bought 15 players?” Cellino has done more for Leeds than Harvey and his cronies ever did. We dont want harvey anywhere near ER. We really do not have any time for this man! Grrr!

  5. You had your chance to do good things for Leeds United Master Bates puppet … you blew it big time, and so perhaps the best thing you can now do is to shut up, keep your opinions to yourself and go away.

  6. ‘All hes done is bring financial stability and bought players’ bit rich from this clown. All he brought was administration, financial turmoil and the sale of key players. How this guy is in any position of authority anyway is beyond belief. Its speaks volumes of the FL that they could put such an incompetent idiot in charge.

  7. Financial stability and buying players. Ken and Shaun never got the hang of doing those did they. Selling players and filling their Bank accounts was all that was on their agendas.

  8. This is a man who made comment about lufc when at Bradford before called us WHITE SHITE. This man has more skeletons than a graveyard

  9. The fact that Harvey is deemed a “fit and proper person” to be Chief Executive at the Football League tells us all we need to know about that organisation. “Something is rotten in Gloucester Place”.

  10. Harvey should be investigated for his handling of clubs and so called bonuses when clubs go in to admin he is a complete Norbet

  11. This man either has a huge pair of bollocks or he is stupid beyond belief. ‘All he’s brought is financial stability’. Harvey would have seen us go under rather than seeing us have a little stability. He is the Devil’s child! The FL proved their credibility employing him, the should all be investigated and maybe Cellino will look at that once he has things at ER sorted.

  12. “all he has done is brought some financial stability to a situation, and signed 15 players”
    Well Harvey I see that as a MAJOR improvement and it is far far more than you ever did either as a bates whipping boy or as GFH’s rent boy.
    Clearly it never occurred to you that an owner could actually do things of benefit to the club. Like bates and GFH all you ever did was srew the club for every penny you could get.

  13. Isn’t financial security and the ability to buy players the ultimate aim of every club? Either this idiot has been misquoted, or he is thicker than a crossbeam!

  14. The most obvious problem with today’s decision has nothing whatsoever to do with Massimo Cellino, and everything to do with several people who are happily getting on with the business of running various football clubs whilst at the same time carrying the burden of shady dealings which you might – on today’s evidence – have expected to disqualify them from their football activities.
    Step forward, for instance, Carson Yeung of Birmingham City. Except Carson cannot actually step forward very far, because he’s languishing in a 12′ by 12′ cell somewhere in China, guilty as charged on five counts of money laundering amounting to somewhere in the region of £55m. Or there’s that nice Mr Owen Oyston, of Blackpool FC. He’s a convicted rapist who did time for his crime and will be on the Sex Offenders Register for evermore – but the League have cocked a deaf’un to the misdemeanours of both these men. Oyston’s son Karl, incidentally, was on the League panel which ruled on Cellino today. His rapist dad remains a director and majority shareholder at Blackpool, a matter which apparently tasks the gentlemen of the League not one jot. I wonder how Karl kept either of his faces straight?
    Add to this little hymn to venal and otherwise dodgy behaviour the less than appetising track records of various other owners around the League; men who veer just the right side of criminality, but whose conduct in office would surely cause raised eyebrows in a responsible governing body. There’s the porn barons Sullivan and Gold at West Ham United. Assem Allam at Hull City who wants to re-name his club Hull Tigers, and who advised supporters chanting “City Till We Die” to go ahead and die as soon as they liked. There’s Vincent Tan at Cardiff City, who has ridden roughshod over the history and tradition of the Bluebirds by making them play in red, who wants his ‘keeper to chip in with some goals and who will hopefully suffer a deserved relegation for sacking the manager who gained Premier League status for him and appointing an inexperienced nobody.
    It’s not really that impressive wherever you look around the League – and yet the complacent Burghers who serve on panels such as today’s are blind to it all, blind to everything except their overweening need to find some reason – any reason – to disqualify Massimo Cellino. They eventually got him on a matter of unpaid tax on his yacht, “Nélie”, for which he was heavily fined and had the boat confiscated. But there’s neither rhyme nor reason, there’s neither logic nor consistency in the League stance, not given the context of the case and the precedents set by the ongoing acceptance of some of the bad boys mentioned above.the treatment of the thousands of Leeds fans sweating upon the outcome to this saga was “Cruel and Unusual”, as defined by the Eighth Amendment to the US Constitution. It always did strike me as a blatant flouting of this amendment that the good old US of A had a liking for leaving convicted criminals incarcerated on Death Row, sometimes for decades – and then casually popping them into an electric chair and snuffing them out. Cruel indeed – but sadly not that unusual in the States. The unconscionable lengths that the Cellino decision process has been dragged out to – only for that ultimate, smug and self-satisfied “No” at the end of weeks of torture for legions of Whites – does rather smack of this kind of cruelty on a more mundane level.

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