Football Finance expert Kieran Maguire believes that it is possible for talks over a Tottenham takeover to speed up and offers a reason why the deal appears to be moving slowly at the minute.
Amanda Staveley in talks with Daniel Levy
It has been widely reported over recent weeks that Amanda Staveley has now put a team together to buy a stake in Tottenham and that she is backed by ‘serious money’ from the Middle East (The Sun).
According to some outlets, the former Newcastle co-owner has raised £500m so far and is in talks with Daniel Levy over buying a 25 per cent stake in the North London club, with the discussions said to be ‘advancing’ (Football Insider).
However, since these reports first emerged a couple of months ago, there appears to have been no major development on the matter.
Kieran Maguire explains why takeover talks are delayed
Maguire explained that there have been several instances in the Premier League of owners pricing the club too high, leading to potential investors walking away from the deal.
He suggested that deals could move quickly if the parties wanted them to and pointed to Daniel Levy‘s desire to remain in control as potentially part of the reason why things are not moving as quickly as they can.
Maguire told TBR Football: “When people want to move quickly, they can move very quickly. I think you see that in the speed that PIF moved to acquire Newcastle very shortly after they got approval from the Premier League.
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“I don’t think there is any urgency with Friedkin, for example, in relation to Everton. There are an awful lot of clubs in play today. You can understand why things are moving slowly at other clubs.
“We are talking about substantial money and it is, to a certain extent, a buyer’s market in terms of what is offered by a seller.
“Some of the sellers have got a bit giddy in terms of asking prices, which has meant the buyers have walked away. Even if you want to be a sleeping partner, there is politics involved. Levy thinks nobody can run Spurs as a business better than he can, and I think there’s a lot of merit in that view.”
Tottenham have managed to takeover talks under wraps
While it is clear that Levy has held talks with several potential investors over recent years, there has been very little concrete information that has made its way to the press about these talks.
That suggests that the club and the interested parties are successfully managing to keep things under wraps.
One can understand why that is the case as this is a difficult issue for football journalists to get scoops on as their connections are usually with people who work at the club or agents, who will not be privy to these kinds of high-level talks.
One would not be surprised if we do not hear too much information about the negotiations until it is very close to being completed.