Leeds United chairman Ken Bates has revealed more about the club's decision not to exercise the buy-back clause on the Thorp Arch training ground.

The club confirmed on Friday morning that, following discussions with Leeds City Council, the buy-back option would not be exercised.

THORP ARCH STATEMENT

"We've been in negotiations for three months, but these have dragged on inevitably because of the way any Council works with checks, balances, and so many committees," the chairman told Yorkshire Radio.

"Things weren't being resolved as quickly as they might have been up to last week when obviously the deadline started coming up.

"We kept trying to put pressure on to get the outstanding matters resolved, but it was like dragon's teeth. As soon as one problem was solved up came two more, and some of them were a bit nonsenical to put it mildly, without going into details.

"I think it wasn't helped by the fact the Council employed a firm of outside lawyers who have to justify their existence. It didn't mean we were getting anywhere very fast.

"It came to a situation at 4pm on Thursday afternoon where we were faced with 13 demands, most of which could have been raised weeks or even months ago and we only had seven hours to solve them all.

"This wasn't helped by the fact that their lawyers weren't there on Thursday night and Paul Rogerson (Council CEO), the poor man, was left there until midnight tyring to cope on his own without any back-up or assistance from his side.

"The deal had moved as they inevitably do to a bit of extra protection here, extra cover there, community use which wasn't a problem, and use for the 2012 Olympics and the 2013 and 2015 Rugby World Cups, some of which was contrary to the convenant which was in the covenance when the land was bought from the Council in 2000 and we weren't prepared to take a risk.

"We had to sign unconditionally with Jacob Adler by 11.59 on Thursday night and the Council still wanted to give their agreement with a number of 'subject to...' We weren't prepared to take that risk.

"So, I sat down and evaluated the options of accepting the conditions or not, and unfortunately the financial requirements of the Council had grown so much it became very much touch and go whether it was really an advantage to the club.

"I decided at 11.40pm it wasn't up to the risk because we couldn't find Adler £5.8m in 28 days time and we would have been relying on the Council to keep their half of the bargain.

"It wasn't worth periling the club after all the hard work we have put in over the last five years and we decided to not to proceed.

"A lot of people in the Council worked very hard, but in the end it came down to red tape that no one could resolve, but that's beside us. We have the 2018 World Cup bid which we are working on."

Hear Ken Bates in full on Yorkshire Radio at 5.30pm...