I'm sure he'd take some joy out of selling us to a shitter owner, however it's all about what he can gain from it, so best offer wins. Unfortunately there hasn't been any serious offers to consider.
Or there has been serious offers BUT he isn't really interested in selling?
Closest we've come is the mess Staveley made last year, but it looked like she was just a tyre kicker with no real interest apart from looking to pick us up on the cheap. Now, i know we want him out, but he's not going to accept an offer that doesn't suit him. I wouldn't accept an offer for a possession that wouldn't suit myself either. If she was serious then they would have found an agreement, found the £50m or so to make the deal happen. They didn't and it was telling for that they tried to use a dirty trick media campaign to force his hand (which failed spectacularly) rather than come back with a better offer, something we'd expect from the current owner. IMO it would have been out of the pan and in to the fire, only with less potential financial backing.
Mind, Staveley may have been hung out to dry by potential backers. Maybe at first she had a few that were worth a fortune and they liked the idea, but for whatever reason they pulled out so she tried to do it on her own. This would be why she couldn't make a second reasonable offer, if so then see the original point; not real offer was made.
Staveley met Ashley’s price for the club, Ashley then went and put the price up as soon as we did, and we arn’t talking about £50m here, we are talking another £100m, another third of the price.
Staveley has the money to pay that, assuming Ashley wouldn’t put the price up again. However she has plans for the club which includes about £150m of immediate investment. Around half of that would have been for players. Another half would have been for the training facilities/academy, and stadium improvements. From what I understand it wouldn’t just be training and acedemy upgrades, but a whole new training ground and academy complex in a new location. The sort of campus that Premier League clubs are building, and something that would be for every age group could use. It would also have meant that we would be able to invest a lot more into the woman’s team and included a female acedemy.
All of this is what Rafa has said is essential to the club long term, and as I have said it’s what the bigger clubs in the league are doing.
Staveley was nowhere near a tyre kicker, she even went out of her way to being in the Rueben brothers who own land in Newcastle that is to be developed in order to not only kick start the development of the club, but the city as a whole.
Give over.
This is basically what George Caulkin said, and he's seen evidence of the bids made. Ashley doesn't want to sell unless at a ridiculous price - hence he put the price up to £400m.
Exactly this. The lad I know in the Middle East spoke to Staveley, knew the people involved and that they'd verbally agreed to the deal. Ashley changed his mind out of the blue after a boozy lunch meeting, and released the 'time waster' stuff through Bishop/The Sun.
Anybody who believes the Ashley side of this story, is quite frankly, a fucking idiot.
He has form, for being impulsive & belligerent.
Remember he had a meeting with Sheik Mansour's people scheduled, he got on the piss, turned into Billy Bignuts and supposedly told an offsider something like "Fuck them (SM's people), they can come to me". Mansour turned his attention to City, and the rest is history.
I can believe the story of the boozy lunch meeting, and Ashley doing his best impersonation of a East End gangster.
Wait, what's this got to do with recently-outed super friends group?
Oh i see, calling them super so you get an invite.
