The third and final deadline has passed for offers to be submitted for the ownership of Manchester United Football Club, which is currently still kept under lock and key by the Glazer family.
Both front runners for the club, Sheikh Jassim and Sir Jim Ratcliffe are believed to have delivered their final bids well ahead of Friday night’s 10pm UK cut off, meaning that the Glazer’s will spend the next few days evaluating them before deciding whether to offer one or the other a period of exclusivity.
Of course, the Glazers remaining in charge of the club can’t be discounted at this stage as it seems that neither bid will have reached the £6bn that it’s believed the Glazer family initially wanted to cut all ties with the north west giant.
The bids appeared to differ quite significantly from the outset, with Sheikh Jassim’s Qatari delegation understood to want to buy the club outright, whereas Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s Ineos backed bid was only ever for 69 percent of the club, the same valuation as the Glazer’s currently hold.
On Saturday afternoon, The Times reported on the shock development that Sir Jim’s bid was actually higher than that of Sheikh Jassim’s, and it was also revealed that was the case in the second round of bidding too.
If it’s cold, hard cash that interests the Glazer’s, then there can only be one winner, and it will be very interesting indeed as to what happens over the course of the next week.