Today is the day that the Leeds Fans United group, led by entrepreneur Dylan Thwaites will be granted an "exclusivity agreement" by Massimo Cellino to start the £30m purchase of the majority shareholding of Leeds United.

Before we go on any further, I must point out that I am not a financial-expert as my bank-balance will testify. In fact I'd go as far to say that you could brand me a Corbyn-supporting, Capitalism-hating Commie. The truth is I despise how money has become oxygen where our beautiful game is concerned. I realised we were on the slippery-slope when Chelsea fans were taunting Man U fans not over the capture of a star player but their Chief Executive Peter Kenyon many years ago. I live near Derby and their fans are a massive bunch of saddo's in my opinion; primarily based on their "stuck in the 70's" attitude towards us. Boxing Day, Franny Lee, Norman Hunter that old codswallop. However I cringed last week when they were celebrating from the rooftops and drinking their city dry with the latest pigswill dredged from the Trent all because Sam Rush, a tubby little baldy bloke with one of those daft goatee beards had signed a new five-year contract. He's the Chief Executive by the way.

I will concede though that Adam Pearson's recent departure from Elland Road was greeted with the depression normally reserved for the sale of a popular player. This was as much due to the fact he'd managed to keep Cellino locked in the broom-cupboard admirably for four-months, as well as him being a smart, football financial-cookie.

Enter our next Chief-Executive in-waiting Dylan Thwaites. A Preston-based lifelong Leeds fan who is fronting the Leeds Fans United bid. It was interesting to hear soundbites of an interview he'd done with the eternally-reassuring tones of Adam Pope on BBC Radio Leeds yesterday. The full version is available on their website. I was just pulling away from Woolley Edge services prior to kick-off, having bumped into some unusually non-threatening, quite-friendly and jolly Cardiff fans and Dylan confirmed that Leeds Fans United hope to agree an "exclusivity agreement" with Cellino today (Wednesday) which will allow them have exclusive access to the accounts and see whether or not the club is in a healthy enough state to spend £30m on gaining a majority stakehold in.

Surely though this exclusivity thing goes against the grains of root capitalism? Free-market? Highest bidder and all that? I understand that this will cost Leeds Fans United £500,000 for a three-month period to pore over the accounts etc.

You will remember during the GFH buy out from Ken Bates aka TOMA, this took around eight-months and in fact the exclusivity period expired. Bates has since typically and somewhat bullishly accused the Arab bank of being deliberately difficult. However I'd imagine Bates's complex ownership structure of the club was the real reason, let's face it for the early part of his tenure he denied actually knowing who he was working for. This is my biggest fear, what state are the club's finances in? Although Cellino is perhaps fishing for some much needed good PR by making a gesture in offering LFU first refusal on what he paid for his stakeholding, I would not like to estimate how much money he has pumped into the club to merely keep it afloat. Maybe this will be done in the form of loans and will be one of many liabilities any new majority stakeholder will inherit from Cellino. Another obvious one which springs to mind are impending court-cases, not including the ones personal to Cellino and his eternal battles with the Italian tax-authorities but two that spring to mind are the allegations of breach of contract with former kit supplier Macron and the acutely embarrassing situation with Lucy Ward. Ms Ward you will recall was dismissed from her job in the summer as our Education and Welfare Officer after spending 17 years with the club. She is also the partner of our former boss and Academy Director Neil Redfearn. On the subject of former managers, Cellino has dispensed with five in total and it is believed we are paying off them off in instalments with a figure of compensation yet to be reached with Redfearn.

It was interesting to hear Dylan talk about "tiers of finance" when asked how he would raise the £30m needed for Cellino's stake. He spoke of the ordinary fan in the street who are able to invest anything between £100-£10,000 in share-ownership schemes. He claims to have wealthy Leeds fans prepared to invest significant capital, he didn't specifically name names but the headlines this morning suggest he's thrown down the gauntlet to Russell Crowe to get on board - I know! Him again! Remember Crowe spoke very publicly about his love for Leeds United and purchasing the club in the summer which coincided with the release of his latest film. He also talked of approaching financial institutions as a last resort.

Another fear I have are the astronomical running costs involved with Leeds United. It beggars belief looking at our wage bill and the league table. Then there's the rent on Elland Road and Thorp Arch which I believe is around £40,000 a week, yep 40k before you've even kicked a ball or flicked on a light switch. Despite my socialist beliefs, I'm fond of classic-cars and when I took redundancy from work in the summer I could have easily afforded to get myself a Jaguar XJS, White of course like the Saint but the truth is I could afford to have kept that beast of a V12 engine running for very long! This is what GFH found when they had to beg Ken Bates's missus for £1m to pay the wages.

I sincerely hope this is the start of something wonderful and I wish Dylan and his associates all the very best in their quest to do something amazing here. This is something like never before, a Mammoth task, bucking the trend, fan-ownership which conjures up wonderful words like co-operative and community cohesion; a concept at odds with the beautiful game and absent from Leeds United for a generation. However I am cautious, we've seen it all before haven't we? An octogenarian Chelsea loving dictator, the Arab bank built on sand and a loveable Latin rogue who is nothing but an unpredictable lunatic and such an embarrassment it feels like the Football League are actually doing us a rare favour by banning him.

We deserve better.

Photo: Action Images via Reuters

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