I’m currently on holiday in Gran Canaria and cutting a long story short, can’t get any WiFi via the hotel.
Fortunately, thanks to 3 mobile’s excellent “Feel at home” benefit, I can get online via my phone.
Unfortunately, I’m rubbish at typing on a phone and find it really tedious, so forgive me for quite a bit of cutting and pasting, courtesy of the Birmingham Mail.
First, Xia apparently outright rejected a £30mill bid for 30% of the club, which on the face of it, is a decent proposal.
“Of course there were some proposals of their own.
One of those was to sell star performer Jack Grealish for no less than £40m – and use all of the incoming funds as operating capital”.
I’d guess that was because it just isn’t enough money.
Next, if the Mail are to be believed, he has now turned down a second offer for 51% of the club, although there’s no mention of how much money is involved.
I’d guess that either the valuation is too low or that the bid required Xia to pump some of his own money into the club, which he just can’t do.
The good news is that it seems both parties were willing to make heavy investments.
And there are still other interested parties.
I personally now wonder what Xia wants and I suspect it’s a total sale.
Hence I reckon we’re going to be looking at new owners and the “investor” part is a bit of a smokescreen.
Which might be a good thing, but we all know there are plenty of shysters out there.
Talking of which, Xia has been censured by the Shanghai stock exchange for claiming to have sold a company to someone.
Nowt wrong with that, but it seems that the “someone” was another of Xia’s own companies and that part wasn’t stated.
That’s tantamount to downright fraud and shows Xia in a really bad light.
It’s probably another example of how desperate Xia has become and puts the lid on the “not able to get money out of China” talk.
The story comes from a new site, Villaleaks.com.
I’d love to know who’s behind that.
Who has the agenda to want Xia in trouble and knows the right sort of places to look, I wonder?
I now sadly believe that regardless of the risk of selling to yet another owner we don’t know, Xia has to go.
The trouble is, we might get yet another totally opaque Chinese owner.
On a brighter note, it’s been a great World Cup up to now, hasn’t it?
