Yeah, forget 777 completely. That ship has sailed now.
Is he in a position to play that game? Like you mention, he has a few outs that can delay for a few months in Branthwaite, Pickford and onana but he essentially has no power over this situation anymore (as far as I can tell) in terms of dictating price, the man is absolutely desperate. Does he risk playing silly games and walking away with nothing should the club slip into administration?
Absolutely shambolic it’s come to this. My fear is that any half decent owners wouldn’t touch us anyway now given the crippling debt levels, clowns like R&MF seemingly holding a lot of power too. Will we just end up with a more legit 777?
The fact he’s willing to sell for £69 mill brings in loads of bottom feeding investors that previously wouldn’t get near a PL club, these type of investors work out that exposure is better then the risk and or the ability to leverage assets. There is a whole gambit of these type of high risk investors of distressed assets, that they try and recover, if not they’ll just asset strip to raise capital.
You might then have a big fish investor, who will come in clear or restructure debt, provide working capital and stabilise us, over a season or three and put a proper board in place. This type of investor if they need to commit the additional funds, won’t want to give to commit much to an owner who is clearly a loon and incompetent, they will know every decision he makes buries himself further, raises the tension and weakens his negoating position.
Why would anyone touch us? Well on paper, we need a lot of investment and work. However what we have going for us, is we are members of a 20 team group, in one of the most lucrative sports league in the world, from an infrastructure point of view, we will be up there in the top 8 with the new ground, widening the base in terms of competing. We need to remove the debt, that can be restructured once the ground is finished and we can get rid of Metro, MSP and R&M and make the debt more manageable on a big multi year basis. At our worst - now we are still in this league and competing. All that is attractive. It would take the type of investor that could secure or fund or credit - in a way Moshiri hasn’t been able to. Long term if you can recover the club, with a proper board, strategy and management team, your investment appreciates.
He needs to lower his asking price…….we need to put pressure on him to get there.
