Man Utd takeover: Insiders dismiss ‘taken off market’ claim but Glazers ‘happy to sit’ until they get £10bn | OneFootball

Avram Glazer attends the FA Cup final between Manchester United and Manchester City.

A report has dismissed claims that the Glazer family have told bidders that Manchester United will be taken off the market.

It has been 18 years since the Americans’ controversial leveraged takeover of the club and nine months since they announced a strategic review.

The sale of Man Utd was one option being considered but the interminable potential takeover process rumbles on, despite offers from Sheikh Jassim and Sir Jim Ratcliffe.

There were reports over the weekend that Man Utd is about to be ‘taken off the market’ by the Glazers after bidders ‘failed to get close to their anticipated asking price’.

But the Daily Mail now claim that ‘sources close to the two bidders in the takeover race on Tuesday night disclosed they had not been informed that the sale was off’.

It has been claimed that ‘insiders in both the camps of Qatar’s Sheikh Jassim and British billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe said they had not been informed of such a conclusion’.

Talks are understood to be ‘continuing’ but the bidders will now need to up their offers for Man Utd if they want to bridge the ‘substantial gap’ between their £5bn offers and the Glazers’ new £10bn valuation of the Premier League club.

Football finance expert Kieran Maguire has explained how the Man Utd owners have got to their £10bn valuation with the Glazers “quite happy to sit” until someone matches their asking price.

“I don’t think the Glazers were trying to avoid a sale of the club,” Maguire told Football Insider. “When Chelsea were sold for £2.5 billion in May 2022, it did effectively re-jig the valuation of all football clubs.

“But I think the Glazers have seen the significant values being ascribed to different elements of Barcelona, where the club has used what they refer to as economic levers, which seem to have the characteristics of payday loans.

“The Glazers have added those up and in their heads, the club is now potentially worth somewhere in the region of £10billion. If the market does not agree with that, then the Glazers are quite happy to sit.

“They’ve taken significant sums out of the club in the form of both dividends and share sales so they’re certainly not in need of cash. They still believe that football is vastly undervalued by the markets and they can extract further value.

“So it’ll be interesting to see whether there’s a formal announcement from the Raine Group or from the club itself with regards to a prospective sale.”

Manchester United The Glazers