First post.
My take on the situation is that Rafa is very likely to sign. If he was to reject the offer (assuming it's there for him to reject) then he'd be walking away from a (potentially) ideal job which suits his personal circumstances, for no money, with no obvious job insight.
I think there's clearly enough been offered for him to consider, but obviously not enough for him to sign on the dot straight away, so my belief is that there would be enough in the contract for him to tolerate knowing full well he does have the opportunity to improve (but necessarily how he wants to) but also knowing that if someone were to come in for him he'd also have enough leeway to orchestrate an exit should he need to. I know Rafa has usually honoured his contracts but this is a unique situation for him as it's probably the only role he's had where his actually over qualified for his job in hand.
This leads me onto the second part, how the takeover affects his situation. Well in my opinion it's absolutely clear as day that Ashley has used this to his advantage and offered him terms that aren't ideal knowing that Rafa has his job security now threatened by a potentially new owner (who quite rightly) may want to have their own man.
If Rafa rejects the contract, then there is zero guarantee that the potential new owners will offer him anything, Rafa walks away with nothing; no job no compensation and no immediate return to something he's clearly obsessed with doing.
So the decision boils down to one thing - compensation.
If Rafa is to sign under this stewardship he will guarantee himself compensation should the new owners not want him. The worst case scenario for Rafa in this, is he works for Ashley is less favourable conditions but conditions that ARE workable (if these conditions were unworkable we'd have known by now), the other scenario is he would sign and get sacked meaning he'd be due compensation.
Best case scenario is that he signs and gets to re-negotiate his contract with new owners.
The caveat to all this is that despite the general confidence around here, Rafa would manage ANY club in the world. Rafa is the ultimate professional and I don't believe club ties will mean anything to him. There are clubs like, Wolves, Everton, West Ham and Villa with whom he's been linked to in the past, who I believe would snap him up when their manager's role inevitably become available.
Ultimately, I think Rafa will sign, but it will either be after the takeover gets a resolution, one way or another, or at the very last moment if the direction of the club is still unclear.
