The madman who made Leeds a laughing stock: As club finally edges back from the abyss, these are the crazy but true tales about Massimo Cellino - the manager-eating former owner who punished fans with a 'Pie Tax', spied on his employees, and much more...

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You might think that the recent situation at Leeds United was crazy, with Marcelo Bielsa admitting to spying on the entire Championship. But just ask the club's fans: this is nothing. Until May 2017, the club were owned and run by a madman.

Massimo Cellino took control of Leeds when the club was in utter financial disarray. Fans hoped he would be their saviour but, by the end of his three-year reign between 2014 and 2017, Leeds had become a laughing stock.

He had arrived in England with a reputation. He was Il mangia-allenatori — the manager eater — a man already turned away from West Ham by the game's governing bodies. But few could predict the chaos he'd cause at Leeds. He was not averse to spying too – but on people within his own club.

Massimo Cellino's time in ownership of Leeds United was turbulent, chaotic and farcical

These are the true tales of:

• How Cellino appointed a non-League manager to the role of head coach — to the man's own surprise

• How a 'Pie Tax' was implemented to 'punish' fans who protested against him

• Leeds turning down a player because he was born on the 17th day of a month

• How players had to use a river instead of ice baths for recovery

• Cellino buying a player, watching him once in training, then getting rid immediately

• Refusing to pay to clean the club's swimming pool, causing staff to get sick

This list, however, barely scratches the surface.

Cellino is considered a billionaire, although he has said: 'I have never been able to find out how much money I have.' His wealth comes from inheriting his father's agricultural company – earning the nickname the 'King of Corn'.

He moved to London in 1975 at 18 with dreams of becoming a rock star. He ended up washing dishes at the Regent Palace Hotel.

Not that his fantasies ever died. At 59, the chain-smoking and whiskey-drinking Cellino and his band performed in front of 25,000 people.

He owned Cagliari for 22 years. Cellino's relationship with the fans was never great. At one point, Cagliari ended up playing their home games 500 miles away from Sardinia.

Cellino wanted to be a rock star - he plays guitar and is a heavy smoker and drinker

The first sign that something was wrong during his reign at Leeds was on transfer deadline day in January 2014. Striker Ross McCormack called into Sky Sports News, saying on air that he would stay as long as manager Brian McDermott did.

Then it broke. McDermott had suddenly been dismissed by Cellino. McCormack phoned back and put out a 'come-and-get-me' plea.

Leeds fans reacted badly. Cellino was still at Elland Road. A group went down to the ground. A taxi sent to collect Cellino was chased away. Cellino was trapped inside his own football club.

The next day, Leeds won a local derby against Huddersfield, 5-1. As fans left the ground, news broke that McDermott was not dismissed.

It had dawned on the previous owners, GFH Capital, that Cellino was not yet truly in charge and they could go back on his calls. Chaos from the off.

A week later, Cellino just needed approval from the Football League. He failed their test.

The agreement between Cellino and GFH Capital said that even if he failed the test, he would have to provide funding until Leeds qualified for the Champions League.

GFH stopped funding the club. Staff and players went unpaid.

Cellino was in Miami. A Leeds fan known only as ToeNailSoup called him, then released the 'interview' on social media. Cellino was unguarded and honest.

He called then managing director David Haigh 'a son of a b****, dangerous, a f***ing devil'. He ranted about player wages. He called some of them 's***'. Cellino called himself 'the sheriff'.

Few could have seen what was coming next.

David Hockaday had most recently been in charge of National League side Forest Green Rovers, and was invited for a chat: 'I'd done my homework on Cellino,' he told Sportsmail. 'I saw his record with managers. I thought he would be bringing in an Italian-based head coach. I thought he either wanted me to give support to this head coach, or as an Under-23 coach.

'I got on really well with him, he has a lot of knowledge about the game. We talked about tactics and he asked me a few good questions.

'After about three hours, he said, 'I like you. Would you like to be my head coach?'

Picture it. The recently dismissed manager of Forest Green being asked if he wanted to be put in charge of Leeds. 'The fella beside me nearly fell off his chair,' Hockaday joked.

'I turned to Cellino and said, 'Do you know what you're asking? In the game, I've got a good reputation, but the fans won't know me from Adam. You're going to leave yourself open to some stick.' He said, 'That doesn't bother me, does it bother you?' I said, 'No, I'm a good coach. I can handle that.'

'He was going to do all of the finances, all of the recruitment. What he did say was you will pick the team. Having said that, he kept on signing players that I wouldn't have signed.

'I can see why he wanted to pick someone like me. Someone who wouldn't demand things.'

His appointment of Dave Hockaday (left) as manager in 2014 was a staggering move

Hockaday had no idea how badly the club had been run down behind the scenes under Cellino.

'There was no pre-season, not one game. We had a week or so before training started.

'There was no food being served up at Thorp Arch.

'We didn't really have a match analyst. I was going into games blind. I had to phone up managers and say, 'Listen, could you give me a little bit of an insight on the boys'.'

Cellino paid for the team to go out to Italy. There'd be three games, including one against a Romanian side. Hockaday never believed they'd show up for the match and he was proven right.

He had to split his group into two teams and have them play a match against each other to entertain the few hundred Leeds fans who had shown up.

Over that period in Italy – which included Hockaday using a river in the Dolomites in the place of ice baths for recovery – Cellino kept in touch.

Cellino grabs his crotch while in the East Stand at Elland Road in 2015

'He'd send me a video and say, 'Here's who we want to sign'. I'd look at the video and go, 'No, I don't like him'. He'd say 'Well, we're going to sign him anyway.'

'He got this centre half. He was a giant Scandinavian, playing in the Italian league. He said, 'What do you think of him?'. I said, 'No good'. His face dropped. He was raging. I said, 'Watch him in training.' The next day we had training, he watched him, and by lunchtime he said, 'He's gone.'

There was more to Cellino's signings than just playing ability.

'He kept on bringing in these lads who all reported to him. He was seen as the manager, they'd all call him up after training and tell him how it went.

'The players he was bringing weren't good enough for the Championship and weren't good enough for Leeds United.'

Hockaday would only last six competitive games.

'I'd have bet money that being head coach of Leeds would have been a good thing for my career. It hasn't turned out that way,' says Hockaday.

In one game away at Brentford, Cellino caused a ruckus in the director's box and was kicked out. He jumped into the away end instead, swaying and singing with the fans.

Cellino needed a helping hand.

Matt Child is a boyhood Leeds fan. His son is called Lucas, after Radebe.

He's also had experience in big business. His arrival as chief operating officer under Cellino seemed ideal.

He met Cellino in September 2014: 'I spent just short of two hours with him, talking about football, family, the history of the club.'

Later, Cellino's PA called: 'They said, 'You've got to come (to the game) tomorrow. You've got to bring your family. We'll get you a tie when you get there. Don't wear purple and don't let anyone wear purple.'

It was the start of Child's crash course in Cellino's superstitions.

Cellino chants with Leeds fans in the away end at Brentford in September 2014

'We scored, and (Cellino's wife) Francesca said to me after the game, 'It's a good job we scored or he wouldn't have had you back'. I thought it was a joke, but it soon turned out that he was more superstitious than you could ever imagine.

'If we had lost that day, I'm sure he wouldn't have had me back. If we had won 3-0, maybe he'd have had me up front the following week.'

Child worked for a few days a week, for nothing, before it became official.

It was not an easy gig.

Darko Milanic lasted as manager until late October 2014 - just 32 days. 'Cellino said, 'He's finished, he's finished'. I said to him, 'I'll come see you tomorrow, we can talk about what you want to do.'

'I thought he'd have calmed down or he'd appoint a new manager and I could help him.

'He just sort of smiled, and said, 'Too late' before winding his window up and driving off.'

The manager eater had had his dinner.

Darko Milanic was the third manager to come and go at Leeds under Cellino

But more than those moments, it was the spying that surprised him.

'Cellino described his closest guys, his chief sneaks, as his pair of slippers. Always there when you need them.

'They were more than happy to spy for him, to be his eyes and ears, to speak ill of other people.'

There were always problems behind the scenes for Neil Redfearn, who ended up doing the 'BBC' work – bibs, balls and cones – himself, even when appointed manager.

Child continues: 'We were playing Bournemouth at home (in January 2015). There were a few people in Massimo's office. He knew I really liked Neil, and he said to me, 'If we lose tonight, you're firing him'.

Child's night got worse. The evening was meant to include a minute's silence for the recently passed Leslie Silver.

Silver is a huge figure in Leeds' history. As chairman, he dragged the club out of their dark days in the 1980s, helped end the worst of the racism on the terraces and led them to a league title in 1992. When he died, it was front page news in Leeds for a week.

Leeds won the game 1-0 after Marco Silvestri touched a penalty onto the bar in the 87th minute. Child recalls: 'Massimo said, 'It's the hand of god. The hand of Leslie'.

'It was the worst footballing moment. It had taken me a lot of hard work to get Leslie's minute silence on.

'It's f****** horrible. (Cellino) denied knowledge of it on match day, when he'd known all along.

'I went over and confronted him. I ended up having a bit of a shouting match with him in the kitchen. Eventually, he said, 'Okay, we'll do it.'

Other stories he can view with an element of humour, not least Cellino's issues with the number 17. 'The superstition stuff was always front and centre. There was a player he was looking at. He put his profile in front of me and said, 'What's the problem?' The guy had been born on the 17th of the month.

'Genuinely, that kind of 'f****** hell, really?' superstition.'

Child eventually had enough and walked away in March 2015.

The infamous 'manager eater' sacked six bosses (and other staff) in just three years at Leeds

The season culminated with six of Cellino's imports pulling out of an away game on the morning of the match, citing injuries. They became known as the 'Sicknote Six'.

Uwe Rosler replaced Redfearn that summer. There was a bizarre press conference in which Cellino spoke for an hour, with a 15-minute pause in the middle for a cigarette.

Rosler's reign began in May 2015 and ended in October, and Steve Evans' subsequent one lasted until the end of 2015-16.

But any positivity towards Cellino evaporated when Redfearn went. Fans protested.

Anger towards him during a game against Blackburn led to a £5 surcharge being added to tickets in Elland Road's South Stand. That was where the most vociferous complaints about Cellino had come from during that match.

The charge went towards a voucher, which could be exchanged for a pie and a drink. People at the club admitted that it was a way of punishing those who opposed him. It became known as 'Pie Tax'.

Meanwhile, Cellino waged war with Sky Sports. He felt games were moved for TV coverage too often. He tried to ban Sky Sports' cameras from the stadium for the game against Derby in December 2015, but eventually relented.

After that, he was a relatively absent figure, barring the occasional meal with Evans, or the time he invited 'Mini-Me' from the Austin Powers films, Verne Troyer, to a game.

Garry Monk arrived in June 2016 and saw out the entire season, the only manager to do so under Cellino. The drama, however, continued.

Leeds fans protest against Cellino during a game against Middlesbrough in February 2016

The 'Time To Go Massimo' group beamed Cellino's image onto one of the stands at Elland Road

Lucy Ward is well-liked. She played for Leeds' women's team, scored at Lucas Radebe's testimonial, and worked for the club as head of football education.

Lewis Cook would mention Ward as an influence. Ditto Fabian Delph and James Milner. She is close to a mother for most of the kids who've come through Leeds's academy.

In 2016 she recalled a conversation after Cellino saw a female conditioning coach working with the Under 21s. 'I can't having a f****** woman doing that. She a woman. She sleep with players,' Ward quoted Cellino as saying.

She dealt with other issues. Cellino sacked all of the cleaning staff at Thorp Arch, deciding the U18s could clean instead to save money. A sickness bug broke out, caused by spores from the swimming pool which Cellino refused to pay £25,000 to heat and treat.

Ward was also Redfearn's partner. In an industrial tribunal, it was alleged that when he went, Cellino thought she had to go too. He viewed the two as a 'pair'.

So she was sacked. The club said she had failed to ask for a leave of absence to cover the Women's World Cup.

Ward took the club to court in said industrial tribunal for sexual discrimination and unfair dismissal. She won her case. Leeds had to pay Ward £290,000 and legal costs.

She's a broadcaster now. She is not doing the work that helped produce Cook, an U20 World Cup winning captain, or Delph and Milner, Premier League winners.

Cellino once locked himself out of his office at Elland Road and had to scale the building, open a window and allow himself back in.

It's the sort of tale you'd want to hear from a crazy uncle. Not your boss.

As much as the superstitions, the interviews with fans and the visits to the Brentford away end endeared him to people, the rest can be upsetting.

Child recalled a story at the end of our chat: 'He told me once I had to fire a guy because 'he looked weird'.'

Those who were collateral damage will not forget Cellino - the current strange events at Leeds are nothing compared with him.

Cellino's bizarre reign ended in May 2017 when he sold up to Andrea Radrizzani