Tuesday 3 July 2012

Middle Eastern backers moving into the Championship

Whilst we are undergoing Boardroom discomfort, Director Alex Newall resigned yesterday to join Peter Varney, our Championship rivals at Nottingham Forest and Leeds United may be about to see Middle Eastern money backing their clubs. 


Kuwaiti's, in the shape of the Al-Hawawi family are expected to take complete control at Forest and Leeds United say due diligence is being carried out by potential investors, again rumoured to be Middle Eastern.


The interest for us here is that one of the latest lines of speculation suggests that Tony Jiminez, formerly associated with brokering the ill-fated Zabeel Investments deal from the ruling family in Dubai, is trying to revive the deal. The only fact so far is that there are Boardroom moves afoot that are unexplained. The Official Site reported Newall's resignation yesterday simply as part of a "planned restructure."


If Jiminez is now keen to exit quicker than originally planned, following promotion, it is either through necessity or opportunity. The necessity option would suggest he is struggling financially and may scotch the Kevin Cash rumours once and for all. In those circumstances, you would have to hope that opportunity is driving the changes, although I am unclear why Peter Varney and Alex Newall would resign in those circumstances.


Logic also tells you that there has been no positive change in the global financial situation which prompted Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed to pull out of the £50m takeover last time around. In fact, we teeter on the brink of a Eurozone crisis which looks very likely to run and run extending financial uncertainty well beyond the coming season.Having said that, the stories at Forest and Leeds are encouraging. Perhaps they are seeing the bottom of the market in sight and are moving to capitalise. If that's the case, we must be attractive in terms of value for money.


Once again we find ourselves in the dark as supporters and with no practical explanation forthcoming from the Board, rumour fills the void and deep-down we are all scared of the dark.

4 comments:

  1. Premier League revenue is skyrocketting and financial fair play means anybody wanting to spend to success needs to do it in the next 3-4 years. I think that's probably why these people are interested now?

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  2. Good comments Dave

    A proper announcement from the Club would be useful in these times of uncertainty.

    For a Board that made itself quite supportive and vocal last season. they appear to be eerily quiet at this time! Let's hope "no news is good news"!

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  3. Lots of guesswork & no facts. A lot of your guesses are way off the mark.

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  4. Anon - you are obviously better informed than me.

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