News: A record attendance for a Heineken European Cup pool game in Ireland, or potentially anywhere for that matter, is anticipated at Lansdowne Road this evening and the sense of expectancy is palpable.
Leeds United yesterday confronted the possibility of another mass exodus of players with a defiance which may have to give way to fiscal necessity before Monday's deadline with their creditors.
The financially wrecked Yorkshire club have turned down a £5 million joint offer from Tottenham for Paul Robinson and James Milner while they try to attract bigger bids, and last night made a bold public declaration that Alan Smith would not be sold.
Tottenham are entitled to believe their offer would ordinarily have persuaded Leeds to sell at a time when United need roughly £5 million to convince their creditors they have sufficient funds to stay afloat until the end of the season.
But the fact that Leeds have rejected the offer should not be seen as anything but part of the bartering process, particularly as they have been actively hawking Robinson to Premiership rivals over the past few weeks. It says much for their current predicament that they seem willing to part company with one of England's better young goalkeepers, regardless of the fact that it would leave them with only an untried teenager, Scott Carson, to take his place.
For the time being Leeds seem to be concentrating on keeping their best players while bidding farewell to the fringe ones. Several departures are on the cards but the club denied fresh reports that Newcastle had put in an official bid for Smith; they said he was "definitely not for sale". Bobby Robson, the Newcastle manager, also denied tabling an offer but there are conflicting noises emanating from St James' Park and the suspicion is that a bid is imminent.
As for Milner, the club would dearly love to keep him as well but, like Smith, he has had time to realise that he may have to be sacrificed for financial reasons. Tottenham are not the only club aware of his potential availability, with Manchester United reportedly among those on the fringes. Milner is represented by Mick McGuire of the Professional Footballers' Association but is understood to have links with the agent Jason Ferguson, son of United's manager Alex Ferguson.
On another day of boardroom tensions and cost-cutting measures, Leeds's acting chairman Trevor Birch showed a ruthless edge by paying off the rest of the Brazil defender Roque Junior's contract and offering severance payments to two more unsuccessful loan signings, Zoumana Camara and Didier Domi, to their intense irritation. Both refused but Roque Junior will join either Perugia or Hamburg an estimated £1.2 million richer from a turbulent six-month spell at Elland Road that incorporated only five Premiership appearances.
At effectively £240,000 a game, with a red card thrown into the equation, the Brazilian World Cup winner will be remembered as coinciding with the most difficult period in the club's history.
Lamine Sakho and Salomon Olembe should also be off the payroll by the time they return from the African Nations Cup next month. Olembe is expected to sign for Blackburn and Sakho's representatives are speaking to other Premiership clubs.
Taken aback by the fans' hostility that greeted their decision not to accept a 35 per cent wage deferral, the Leeds players attempted to improve a desperate situation by releasing a statement yesterday saying they were "fully behind the club". Words of support will do Birch little good, however, with the prospect of Leeds becoming the first Premiership to go into administration getting ever closer and the threat, too, of legal action from Willie McKay, the agent representing Camara and Domi. "They have gone the wrong way about things. There was no negotiating - the hammer simply came down from Trevor Birch," said McKay. "Under his instructions, he sent in Eddie Gray and the club's secretary Ian Silvester to ask them (Camara and Domi) to sign papers releasing them from their contracts. They refused because if a club takes a player on loan for a season then they should have him for that season.
"There was no guarantee if they had signed the papers that (their clubs) Paris St-Germain or Lens would have taken them back and paid them. I admit that neither player has pulled up trees at Leeds this season, but then who has? We could take this to the French Football Federation, the Football Association and FIFA if we wanted. These are international transfers and they are Leeds United players this year. They have an obligation to pay them like everybody else. It's all very messy and it smacks of desperation."
Manchester United face competition for Arjen Robben's signature from Chelsea, according to PSV Eindhoven. "We talked about other things as well, but it is correct that Chelsea have asked us about Robben," PSV's chairman Harry van Raaij said.
