Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Time to end the Shinawatra saga?

With further developments in the Thaksin Shinawatra takeover saga yesterday, is it time that the club now pulled the plug on negotiations with him?

After having had several of his bank accounts frozen last week, his advisor announced that the takeover deal was still on - but this left the club to supposedly 'demand assurances' from him that he could still complete a deal.

Now comes the news that Shinawatra and his wife have been ordered back to Thailand to face further charges of concealing assets, and must do so before June 29th.

Despite all of this, there were further assurances that the takeover is again at an 'advanced stage' and a £120 million bid could be imminent - all of this linked in with the search for a new manager.

Shinawatra (and his wife) may well be innocent of all charges, but the interest generated by the takeover has hardly been positive for the club, and should he complete a takeover could well be damaging in the long term as media interest would surely increase should he become the new owner.

From afar, it appears that in Thailand there is currently a very political battle going on between Shinawatra and the new rulers of the country, with Shinawatra seemingly keen to trade on his populist status whilst the military rulers are seemingly determined to crush Shinawatra. The problem in all of this is that the club, our club, is in danger of being used as a political pawn in this battle.

If he does complete a takeover then it will hardly be the end of investigations into his time as PM, and the same people who are currently gunning for him may well only step up their attempts to discredit him if his ownership of the club portrays him in a good light with the Thai people.

Regardless of the financial impact he may be able to bring to the club - and the undeniable fact that the current regime have thrown everything into the Shinawatra lot (including sacking a manager), is it now time to reconsider our dealings with him and cut our losses before we get further along into something which could have an altogether more signifcant impact further down the line?

vote it up!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Personally am on the fence - none of us know the details of what's really going on in Thailand, so I'll leave it up to the current board (and indeed the FA if it comes down to it as they will be sure to have a look).

What I resent is the Supporter's 'Trust' touting themselves around for publicity with quotes everywhere. The fans are 70-30 against Eriksson are they? Funny, I don't know anyone who's been asked that question. Personally I think it makes us look like the idiots many fans of other clubs already think we are when someone says Eriksson is a backward step from Pearce.

Anonymous said...

quite agree with steve,this "supporters trust" should keep their mouths shut.Sven is the only candidate in the frame who could take the club to the next level,attract good players etc(unlike pearce).The only other option is Ramos, but it looks like he wants to stay at seville.Who actually cares what this inept board of directors think anymore? anyone who is even thinking of hughes, coleman, davies etc should be booted out of the club immediately.

Anonymous said...

If Shinawatra does get found guilty of any financial irregularities (such as selling a billion pounds worth of shares he wasn't allowed to own, for example) he will fail the Premier League's fit and proper person test - and if he is owner of the club when that happens then we will be prevented from taking part in the competition. It looks like the Thai government are determined to make something stick, so if he does take over it will only be a matter of time before we are in a league of our own.

He has never wanted to buy the club, and he never wanted to buy Liverpool. He just wants the publicity and no doubt can't believe his luck that the club have let this drag on so long.

He won't buy the club, he was never going to buy the club, and without his money Ericsson won't be interested and neither will Ramos. It'll be Jewell or Warnock or someone of that level.

And if he does buy it, given the provenance of it and his history or human rights abuse, I won't be at COMS to see it.

Anonymous said...

Well said Nick.

I'm not even bothered by what the Supporters Trust have said because if there's anyone making us look like idiots, it's a dual combination of our own board and Thaksin.

Anonymous said...

not well said Nick as you seemed to be pulled on the side by the untrustworthy Thai Media, but with a beer or two at Patpong I might agree