Three days into last winter’s World Cup all the media were talking about was England’s 6-2 thrashing of Iran and Argentina’s shock defeat to Saudi Arabia.
On websites and in print, international football dominated the news cycles and this hardly surprised given that the greatest sporting circus of them all was underway. Bluntly, it was going to take something momentous to divert attention away from Harry Kane and co.
But then something momentous did happen, seemingly from nowhere.
After 18 years of having a controlling interest in one of the biggest clubs in the world – after nearly two decades of sucking the lifeblood out of the club and furthermore, doing so after purchasing it via a leveraged buy-out, thereby saddling the club with close to a billion pounds worth of debt, all the while watching on while the ground went to wrack and ruin and the team’s Premier League betting odds greatly diminished – the deeply unpopular Glazer family had finally decided to sell Manchester United.
In an instant, Gareth Southgate’s thoughts on an impressive opening performance from the Three Lions were demoted to page two.
Yet nearly eight months on nothing has changed, even if quite a lot has happened. Nearly eight months on, the club remains up for sale.
To get to the bottom of why the process has been so drawn-out – and why the fans continue to be kept in the dark, left to speculate on United’s future with an unnatural mixture of excitement and worry – we must go back to the original statement put out by the Glazer family on November 22nd, a part of which is very pertinent indeed.
‘The Board will consider all strategic alternatives, including new investment into the club, a sale, or other transactions involving the Company,’ it read.
True to form, the Americans were showing little regard for the interests of their football club, instead keeping every avenue open to ensure they got the best possible deal.
Because had they simply erected a ‘for sale’ sign halfway down Warwick Road then two or three serious bidders would have emerged, the Glazers would have set a price, and a compromise would eventually have been thrashed out between the Raine Group – a New York-based banking firm tasked with brokering a deal on behalf of the Glazers – and the highest bidder.
That’s as relatively straightforward as any sale of a football club can get.
Only instead, the Glazers muddied the waters from the get-go, right there in their initial dispatch. In effect they have said, sell it to us why we should sell it to you.
We will see how this has become a problem imminently, but first there were the inevitable rumours and hysteria and fun to be had.
In the first wave of reporting of this huge news story, that took us through to Christmas, Elon Musk was said to be interested, and rival supporters are probably disappointed this didn’t comes to pass given how he’s run Twitter so quickly into the dirt.
There was a consortium from Saudi Arabia too, reputed interest that raised a whole series of moral concerns, while a Finnish businessman entered the fray, then left the conversation soon after.
Which ultimately left us with two serious contenders, they being the INEOS Group, headed by the British billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe, and a Qatari consortium fronted by Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad.
The latter party incidentally brings further complications to proceedings, with the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) – the consortium in question – having strong links with PSG. Like the early Saudi interest, there are also moral objections to consider regarding state ownership and sportswashing.
It is now February, and at this juncture we were aware beyond all speculation of the figure the Glazers were demanding. To relinquish their 69% controlling stake in Manchester United they wanted anywhere north of £6 billion pounds.
We were aware too that in the middle of that month the Glazers had set a ‘soft deadline’ for a deal to be agreed upon. INEOS and QIA therefore duly put in competitive bids, that were each declined, which brings us back to that problem from earlier.
Because whereas Shiekh Jassim proposed to buy ‘100 per cent of Manchester United’, the bid from INEOS was of a much more convoluted nature, pitching a majority buy-out, but allowing the Glazing to retain a 20% share.
There was not only a financial disparity in the bidding to consider then. These were two distinctly different types of propositions to weigh against the other.
Lastly, there is that extortionate £6 billion pound estimation to factor in, one billion of which is made up of debt to be cleared.
By any reasonable estimation, the Glazers are asking for far too much. Indeed, the New York Stock Exchange has placed a maximum value of the club at a little over half that amount.
So it was that another deadline was set, and two fresh bids were declined, and this has been the pattern ever since. Shiekh Jassim is said to have made five official bids to date, the latest exceeding £5 billion.
Where then does this leave us?
It leaves us with club owners who are asking for well over the odds, an unrealistic figure that the two potential buyers have no intention of reaching.
It leaves us with those interested parties having two very different ways and means of taking control of the most successful clubs in English football.
It leaves us with the Glazers purposely not being clear in their objectives, thereby creating these complications and confusion in the first place.
And it leaves Manchester United’s Premier League top four odds in jeopardy because Erik Ten Hag presently has no earthly idea how much or how little he can spend this summer in the transfer market.
It is, in short, a mess. An avoidable, regrettable mess. Do not expect this situation to be resolved anytime soon.
*Credit for all of the photos in this article belongs to AP Photo*
