So I might be a little late to the party with this one. As we all saw Mr Ridsdale’s latest headline-making adventure end in Peter Reid’s dismissal from Plymouth Argyle last month. No details just yet, as there is plenty to say about the current Plymouth chairman, and I wouldn’t want to wear myself out too early.

Let’s start from the beginning shall we, in the tale of the waste of skin that is Peter Ridsdale. The very man that hops from football club to football club, drowning each and every one in a sea of debt from which they barely emerge, while pushing them as close to the point of liquidation as they can go without having to shut up shop and pack it in for good. He, in the meantime, sits on a throne made solely of pound coins and kitten skulls*, throwing darts at a map of the 92 clubs in the country, deciding which he should inflict his unique brand of misery upon next.

*please note, the kitten skulls is merely conjecture, but let’s be honest, would any of us be surprised if it were true?

Interestingly, way back when, Leeds fans actually saw the man as doing a good job. It’s almost impossible to remember Leeds as such a successful team, but under his chairmanship between 1997 and 2003, the Yorkshire team never finished outside of the top five in the Premier League, and reached the semi-final stages of the UEFA Cup and the Champions League at the back end of the nineties. However, like cream produced by even the finest cow in the land, things were to turn sour at Elland Road and the true tale behind how the club became so successful seeped out. Things started to pop into the public eye once Ridsdale stepped down at Elland Road, and the tales of his epic spending sprees slowly sneaked into common knowledge.

Unfortunately for Leeds, it seems that the rat-faced Risdale and his assortment of cronies at the time borrowed more than £60 million against future gate receipts, banking on the fact that his team would re-qualify for the Champions League.

Oops. That of course meant that Leeds were, financially, up a certain creek and lacking a paddle, and the club, its players and the fans would be the ones to suffer.

While players were leaving the club to anywhere that would be happy to take them and plenty were, the spending behind-the-scenes at Leeds was, well… Despite obvious flaws in the business plan £70,000 was spent on private jets for directors, and a fleet of company cars worth £600,000 were pottering around the streets of Yorkshire. Perhaps most famously, Ridsdale was also spunking money up the wall on fish for the boardroom. It wasn’t the fish, obviously, that Leeds fans were to become pissed off about. It wasn’t even the lush and expensive tank that wound them up; it was the fact that the little tropical swimmers were being hired. £20 a month. Why, I hear you ask, would someone hire goldfish? In the words of Ridsdale himself, “It ensured that someone would still feed them if no-one was in the office.”

Dear Leeds fans. Remember the good old days of administration and relegation to League One? Have another read of the above paragraph. It’ll fill you with joy.

Skip forward a few years, when Ridsdale’s name had become dirt in the mouths of those who visit Elland Road and he sneaked his way back into the game, this time sewing his poisonous seed at Barnsley FC. It’s difficult to look at this period objectively, as my eyes wear Tykes-shaped, rose-tinted spectacles, but to boil it down, he was kicked out of the club when local businessman Patrick Cryne stepped in. What state were we in? Borderline liquidation. Are we beginning to notice a pattern here?

Of course we are, as this isn’t new news. After dipping his schlong of evil into the belly button of another Yorkshire club, he decided that he’d done enough damage for the meantime in England and would rather brutally penetrate the innocence of another club in another country for a while.

Cardiff, give us a wave. Cardiff, Cardiff, give us a wave.

Now although the whiter-than-white Ridsdale was cleared of fraud in his time at Cardiff, it is probably safe to say that Bluebirds fans weren’t overly delighted with the goings on during his brief spell there. The chairman extraordinaire offered supporters the chance to pay over £400 for their season tickets, with a promise of the funds being spent on new players in the January transfer window. Cue club statement in February in the same year claiming that there was sod all cash in the piggy bank. Quelle surprise?

Unsurprisingly the fans went mad at those in charge, and Ridsdale had yet another glowing reference on his CV. Added to the fact that the club received no less than five – yes, five – winding up orders during his spell and that it looked like the club were in serious danger of being withdrawn from existance, it is a mystery of the highest order that he managed to bag another job in football after leaving Cardiff with debts of over £65 million.

Then of course, there was the whole Plymouth saga that I mentioned at the beginning of this whole thing.

If you weren’t interested in the plight of Plymouth Argyle, it’s unlikely that you would be reading this in the first place. Some would argue that, in this particular case, Ridsdale’s actions were justified. The team from the South Coast were on a terrible run, with no victories in eight games, and sitting pretty at the bottom of League Two. From a purely football point of view, it seemed fair for the manager to bite the bullet.

However that doesn’t take into account that the club were, like so many of Ridsdale’s adventures before them, on the verge of going bust. Manager Peter Reid, who was given the bump by our favourite chairman, ended up paying the club’s electricity bills and players out of his own pocket. He even sold an FA Cup medal in order to carry on doing so. However that raises questions about the sentimentality of football chairmanship, which I don’t really want to get into here. It would take me a long way off topic, and other people have done it before me, and made a mighty fine job of it. What the whole ordeal didn’t do was raise any sympathy for the man in charge of proceedings. No-one looked at the situation and praised Ridsdale, and when the club were within 24 hours of being ejected from the Football League and existence, it’s fair to say that he wasn’t exactly flavour of the month in the town.

I would imagine, if you asked fans of any of the clubs that Ridsdale has been associated with over the years, their responses wouldn’t be printable on this, a family-friendly website.

The thing that really gets me angry about him, and the ratty face that I mentioned earlier, is his ability to come across as mind-numbingly smug, despite the utter poo shower which he rains down on any football club that is unlucky enough to boast an association with him. He seems to be immune to any criticism, and must have skin thick enough to be able to take a bullet without really noticing.

If anyone with power in the game happens to come across this piece, then I implore you, I beg of you, I offer you a human sacrifice, anything – don’t let this scumbag back into the sport. Don’t let him near another unsuspecting club, and don’t let him bleed any more football teams dry. Peter Ridsdale is a scourge on the beautiful game and only his permanent expulsion from it is a fitting punishment for the crimes that he has commited time and time again.

Photo courtesy of joncandy.