It could be that they were invited to Old Trafford to be told of the difficulties with the legal issues of the deal that Keegan reported on. It could be anything and it could be nothing because that Athletic article had zero information of substance and that picture is from 17th March when all bidding parties visited Old Trafford.
@Rojofiam
No. I believe that we've been lied to for the last 7 months from all sides. Clearly they're 3 different parties in this that all have PR departments and huge billionaire ego's. All information has been provably unreliable, like, demonstrably so. We also have to understand that this is a public process overseen by the SEC and NDA's.
There are 6 siblings that also have provably differing outlooks, wants and needs, institutional shareholders and major sponsors all of which need to some degree be aligned on an outcome. That's not easy to do, especially when the majority of those want paying up. The legal issues are glaring and obvious with Ratcliffe’s offer in a public process overseen by the SEC (different if it was a private negotiation) due to the crazy 8x revenue and 2x market valuation offer from Nine Two Foundation which apparently was refused. Liverpool and PSG sold minority stakes for just about 5x revenue.
All I know is that the info being banded around is false and mostly PR either to protect the stockmarket or someone's image. The delays were obvious. Been saying for weeks this isn't happening and here we are. That's not to say I'm some sort of Qatari shill. It's to just say what I see when I look beyond the the forced narrative. There is as much chance of a no sale as there is of Ratcliffe getting minority investment. There's always the possibility of a third un-named party here also. Nobody knows and that is the point.