Leeds United get no protection from Football League's tepid test | David Conn

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Massimo Cellino would be able to buy Leeds United despite a previous conviction for false accounting and a recent arrest on suspicion of embezzlement

It has been the modern fate of Leeds United fans to endure crises on the flipside of the Premier League miracle ever since their former chairman, Peter Ridsdale, announced the club's 2002 financial collapse with the landmark admission: "We lived the dream."

The nightmare appeared to have calmed under the somewhat unlikely ownership of the Bahrain-based investment bankers Gulf Finance House, who bought the club from Ken Bates in 2012, appointed Brian McDermott as manager and nursed crowds back up to 30,000. Yet now the club has crumpled again, after a hideous weekend and the on-off sacking of McDermott by a lawyer, Chris Farnell, apparently acting for Massimo Cellino, the owner of the Serie A club Cagliari, who has a fraud-related conviction and still has no signed agreement to take over Leeds.

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