Matteo: The day I knew Leeds were on the road to ruin

Dominic Matteo has lifted the lid on Leeds United’s financial meltdown - claiming the club rented him out to raise the cash to buy Rio Ferdinand.

Leeds paid West Ham a then-British record £18million for Ferdinand in 2000, and Matteo has revealed that he and Mark Viduka were used by the Yorkshire club to finance the deal.

The former Leeds skipper claims that was when he first realised that something was very wrong in the boardroom at Elland Road.

Matteo, who makes the revelation in his new autobiography, said: “The moment I first started to think things were maybe not what they seemed came just a couple of months after I’d signed from Liverpool.

“Mark Viduka and myself were called into a meeting where it was put to us that the club wanted to lease us out to an American finance company, with the money received being used to fund Rio’s transfer.

“We were assured this was routine, and my agent and my financial adviser looked at the contract and said it was fine. I went along with it, because I thought it was a chance for the club to bring a top defender to the club.

“But I did feel uneasy and, with hindsight, I can see the club was over-reaching itself even then.”

Matteo witnessed Leeds’ spending spiral out of control, with more players being bought for big transfer fees and handed massive contracts.

What really alarmed the defender was that youth-team players, who had no chance of breaking into the first XI, were also being rewarded with fat contracts.

Matteo reveals he exploded one day at training when he heard one 17-year-old moaning to his mate that he was ‘only’ earning £6,000-a-week.

“I couldn’t believe what I was hearing,” he said. “I went red with rage and launched into this kid, saying ‘You can say you say six f*****g grand isn’t enough? When I was your age, I was getting £200-a-week and playing first-team football for Liverpool.’

“I nearly walled him up, I was that angry. The physio staff had to step in and this lad scuttled off.

“It hit me then what trouble Leeds were in. If that was the attitude of someone who was 17 and nowhere near playing for the first team, things could only go one way.

“I believe that people got contracts just to keep them quiet. There were certain players, who weren’t in the first team, but who were still earning colossal amounts of money, and that was unsustainable.

“Money was no object and there was too much extravagance for a club which hadn’t won anything. Players were flown back from international duty, costing tens of thousands of pounds, when they would still have made it back on time on a scheduled flight.

“People were getting a bit too cocky far too early. The attitude seemed to be that the money would keep coming in, and there was no plan B if it didn’t.”

The money did run out when Leeds failed to qualify for the Champions League in 2001.

The crisis came to a head in January 2004 when the club's creditors threatened to pull the plug if they did not sort out mess.

Matteo backed the board’s proposal to take a wage deferral to help Leeds survive and is still hurt by the abuse he suffered from his team-mates when they met to discuss the idea.

“I tried to explain why I thought it would help the club, but no-one wanted to listen,” he said. “Instead, the players had a real go at me. There were senior players and there was no excuse for the way they had a go at me.

“In the end, I just sat down again, because no-one would listen. I lost a lot of friends that day. Some players backed me up privately later, but that was no good.

“I’d been left to take all the flak, and I’ve never forgotten that.”

I gambled away £1million on the horses admits Matteo  

* In my Defence: Dominic Matteo. The Autobiography, is published by Great Northern Books. Hardback, 288 pages, £16.99, ISBN: 9781905080908. To order a signed copy phone 01274 73056 or visit www.greatnorthernbooks.co.uk.