city-faithful
Well-Known Member
Well how about you tell us how it is then?
Well how about you tell us how it is then?
Well how about you tell us how it is then?
Mandaric fits bill for Leicester
By Gary Lineker
05/11/2006
This has been the season of club takeovers. I can't remember a time in football when there was so much speculation about boardroom moves. Aston Villa started it off with Randy Lerner's takeover. West Ham will announce on Wednesday whether or not Kia Joorabchian will be taking over at Upton Park and rumours continue to circulate about Newcastle, Liverpool and, of course, my team, Leicester City.
Milan Mandaric, the former Portsmouth chairman, has made an opening bid for Leicester, for whom I am a significant shareholder. I think Milan is a good strong candidate and it would be good to see a man like him, with a proven record in English football, coming in to the Walkers Stadium.
I know the club will be speaking to Milan this week and that there are some other parties sniffing around. I hope they can come to some sort of agreement because it looks like being good for the future of the club. A team like Leicester need significant investment in the playing staff to develop.
I have no say in the administrative running of Leicester although I have financial and emotional vested interest. I led a takeover of the club when it had gone bust, getting together a consortium of Leicester people and old friends to try and save my old hometown team.
advertisementTo a man, everyone in that consortium had the best interests of Leicester City at heart. No one was thinking about making financial gain – I don't think we thought we'd ever see that money again!
That means the shareholders' commitment to the future of Leicester remains: we are not trying to sell to the highest bidder but rather to the man who can do most to take the club to the next level.
Mandaric has a record of putting his own money into Portsmouth which shows you he has a real involvement in the game. He has been around for 20 years, in the States and in England. I have always been impressed with him when we have met – he seems sincere and dedicated.
The only thing we have to ask is whether or not Milan can do a better job than us. I believe that to be the case. We just don't have the kind of money you need to build a team that can challenge for a place in the Premiership.
We came in to try and stabilize a club whose very existence was threatened. We were never looking to be empire builders or to make money. We were honestly trying to do the decent thing and even if we get our money back I'm still proud of everyone who came to the help of the club.
If Mandaric is willing to pay what Leicester City is worth then I think it would work for everyone. I would certainly look to be selling most of my shares – although I'd like to hang on to a few. Leicester are still my team after all.
The situation at Leicester is very different to the takeover saga that has dominated the news down at West Ham. It is encouraging that the club seem to think it will all be settled by Wednesday. I think that will come as a relief to the fans and to Alan Pardew. As for the players, it is always difficult to tell how much this kind of boardroom speculation affects the team.
When I came back from Barcelona to Tottenham in 1990 it was a club that was very unstable at board level. You had to be completely dumb not to realise what was going on. Alan Sugar and Terry Venables ended up taking over from Irving Scholar, and Paul Gascoigne was sold.
They were difficult times in some respects – we won the FA Cup without really knowing what was going to happen to the club.
At a club like Tottenham you know someone is going to come. It's not as if you are playing for a smaller club down the league system where you feel your livelihood might be threatened. That's when it can really get to players. If you have a family and a mortgage you need to know that you are going to still have a job next week.
Often players just focus on the football and it can help galvanise a club. In the darkest days at Leicester the players deferred their wages which went a long way to resolving the short-term problems.
Perhaps in the long run all this foreign investment will be good for the game. I'm certainly no financial expert but if clubs get better stadiums and we see better players on the pitch perhaps it is not a bad thing.
What does worry me though is the basic question – why? Why are so many foreign investors with a background in business suddenly attracted to English football clubs? What if they just as suddenly pull out and leave the clubs in a mess? Of course different investors bring different positives and negatives.
I'm sure Chelsea fans don't begrudge what Roman Abramovich has done for the club. He has invested not just in players but the club has a brand new training ground.
Manchester United fans may be less enamoured of Malcolm Glazer's takeover of their club. The club seems to have been in serious debt. The fickle world of football is not the place to take big risks.
The hardest part of judging these takeovers is that to your average fan, the business world is impenetrable. I don't think I'm alone in being baffled by the complexities involved in the financial side of modern football.
It is far from being a transparent industry anyway but until we know more about exactly who is investing in British football – and why – it will remain a cause of serious disquiet.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/main.jhtml?xml=/sport/2006/11/05/sfnlin05.xml
That's rubbish Newton, the board have made no such recommendation, all they have done is acknowledged the bid so far.
Instead of just telling everyone how wrong they are, how about the FT prove to someone how right they are?
Like a bloody school kid taunting "i know something you don't know"
Good Call, but to sneer down on us out of the loop isn't exactly professional.
We aren't, we are just trying to calm down the excitement over a £25m bid which simply doesn't exist.
We don't know who Newton is talking to, but we spoke with the club again yesterday & it was re-confirmed that options would be put forward to shareholders to decide, prior to that board members are working hard on making those options on more attractive terms for the club.
There have been no recommendations to accept anything at this stage.
We aren't, we are just trying to calm down the excitement over a £25m bid which simply doesn't exist.
We don't know who Newton is talking to, but we spoke with the club again yesterday & it was re-confirmed that options would be put forward to shareholders to decide, prior to that board members are working hard on making those options on more attractive terms for the club.
There have been no recommendations to accept anything at this stage.
Have any of the other supposed 'interested' parties submitted bids or even intimated that they would be prepared to do so, my concern is if the board tell Mandaric to sling his hook and then none of these other parties then make a counter offer, where that would leave the club.
Have any of the other supposed 'interested' parties submitted bids or even intimated that they would be prepared to do so, my concern is if the board tell Mandaric to sling his hook and then none of these other parties then make a counter offer, where that would leave the club.
I like your earlier thinking A-Z, I'm fully awaitng the board to turn down MM's offer and then claim to have saved the club from the dreaded evilness of wealth, greed, success and the added expectation that comes with itHave any of the other supposed 'interested' parties submitted bids or even intimated that they would be prepared to do so, my concern is if the board tell Mandaric to sling his hook and then none of these other parties then make a counter offer, where that would leave the club.
We aren't, we are just trying to calm down the excitement over a £25m bid which simply doesn't exist.
In terms of the amount offered to buy out the existing shareholders, we all realise that the figure is no £25M - how could it be? - their share-holdings are clearly worth nowhere near £25M.
But that is not the same as saying that MM has not said that there will be £25M made available in one form or another in connection with this bid, is it? Why do hide behind your half-truths? - it is your own integrity that is being damaged by it. If you are so insistent that the MM camp is wrong in seeking publiciity, why don't you keep quiet as well? Or, if you are going to speak, tell us something that is worth hearing? At the moment, all you are doing is saying, "We know more than you". You would do well to remember whose money put you in that position.
Have you heard of confidentiality?
They won't be allowed to tell us the details of the bid. They have to act responsibly, if they told us stuff they shouldn't, then that would be acting like a schoolkid.
In terms of the amount offered to buy out the existing shareholders, we all realise that the figure is no £25M - how could it be? - their share-holdings are clearly worth nowhere near £25M.
But that is not the same as saying that MM has not said that there will be £25M made available in one form or another in connection with this bid, is it? Why do hide behind your half-truths? - it is your own integrity that is being damaged by it. If you are so insistent that the MM camp is wrong in seeking publiciity, why don't you keep quiet as well? Or, if you are going to speak, tell us something that is worth hearing? At the moment, all you are doing is saying, "We know more than you". You would do well to remember whose money put you in that position.
P | Pld | Pts | |
1 | Liverpool | 21 | 50 |
2 | Arsenal | 22 | 44 |
3 | Nottm F | 22 | 44 |
4 | Chelsea | 22 | 40 |
5 | Manchester C | 22 | 38 |
6 | Newcastle | 22 | 38 |
7 | Bournemouth | 22 | 37 |
8 | Aston Villa | 22 | 36 |
9 | Brighton | 22 | 34 |
10 | Fulham | 22 | 33 |
11 | Brentford | 22 | 28 |
12 | Palace | 22 | 27 |
13 | Manchester U | 22 | 26 |
14 | West Ham | 22 | 26 |
15 | Tottenham | 22 | 24 |
16 | Everton | 21 | 20 |
17 | Wolves | 22 | 16 |
18 | Ipswich | 22 | 16 |
19 | Leicester | 22 | 14 |
20 | Southampton | 22 | 6 |