Anything that involves Mike Ashley was always going to be a soap opera of sorts, so the news that a prospective takeover of Newcastle United took 17 weeks of deliberations before the prospective new owners had finally head enough shouldn’t have surprised anyone.
The Premier League continued to drag their heels in terms of signing off on a deal with the Saudi Wealth Fund, primarily it appeared because of the country’s human rights record.
The longer that the talks went on, and the minutiae of the deal pored over, the more it seemed that it would never come to the conclusion that everyone involved in the deal wanted, which is precisely what happened.
However, the Reuben Brothers, who stood to own 10 percent of the club, want the deal to be resurrected.
“Given our shareholders, the Reuben Brothers, were to be an integral part in the deal, we had many plans for our ventures and sport in the north east,” Martin Cruddace, CEO of the Reuben Brothers’ Arena Racing Company, said in a statement to Sky Sports and cited by the Daily Star.
“We were planning on creating one of the premier sporting hubs in the UK, undertaking development work that is vital for the region and enjoying valuable synergies with the football club.
“We continue to hope that those exciting plans are not in vain.
“We would welcome any resurrection of talks and progress with the Premier League and are aware the the Reuben Brothers remain totally supportive of the deal should there be a way forward.”
Though there are certainly plus points to the takeover, both in terms of money into the club but also the positive effect on the city and surroundings, it doesn’t seem as though the Premier League are willing to take the risk.
You can never say never in football of course…