One thing that angers a large number of Leeds United fans is the deafening silence that emanates from Elland Road a lot of the time.
Winston Churchill once described Russia as a ‘riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma’ and that is exactly what Leeds United are – even Churchill wouldn’t be able to figure it out.
During the third episode of the serialised interviews with David Haigh by TV Yorkshire entitled ‘David Haigh: GFH, Leeds United and Me’, the former Leeds MD touches on some of the skullduggery that was going on behind the scenes at Elland Road that made then-owners GFH look more like the Russian KGB.
It had long been mooted that GFH had brought some form of spying into the boardroom at Elland Road, but in his interview, Haigh lifted the lid on just what was happening behind the scenes. On the question of there being paid GFH investigators, Haigh unequivocally confirmed this saying:
“The investigators they [GFH] paid to come in and spy on people, and enter their offices, and copy their hard drives, and search their emails. You know they even had private investigators pretending to be staff, talking to secretaries to find out the gossip.”
Haigh went on to say that these rent-a-spies were paid for by GFH but he thought that they were invoiced to Leeds United, like a lot of outsourced services were at the time by the Leeds United owners.
The interviewer pressed Haigh on this incredulous, yet all-too-believable story of espionage and intrigue behind the scenes at Elland Road by simply asking who the paid investigators were there to spy on – everyone it seems. As Haigh said in responding to that question:
“Everyone. They were so paranoid. This is Hisham. He was so paranoid that he didn’t trust anyone but, that came a lot from what he’s like; he’s a devious person.”
It’s madness to think that such shenanigans go on behind the scenes at a football club, but then again you’d not dismiss such happenings out of hand at Leeds United.
