IMAGINE for a moment that you've set your heart on buying a stately home in desperate need of repair and have the cash to do it. You've lined up your tame kitchen designer and chosen the curtain fabrics.
At the last minute the selling family calls to say that they've decided to stay put, but that you are welcome to buy a quarter of the property - say, the stable block they keep their thoroughbreds in, which does come with staff accommodation.
Are you interested? The stables do need a new kitchen. And some better horses. The family wouldn't mind winning a few races, after all.
It would have to be a pretty special pile to enter such an arrangement, especially when you'd set your heart on having the run of the property. Such was the dilemma presented to Sir
Hard to think what any of us might have done in
One analysis of the arrangement between the Glazers and Ratcliffe in the media last weekend concluded with a thinly-veiled insinuation that the industrialist was performing a role as the family's "useful idiot".
Football can scramble the greatest business brains, true, but one has to assume that in the detail of the agreement between the two parties is squirrelled Ratcliffe's route to full control or an honourable and profitable exit in time.
Otherwise idiocy really will be an appropriate tag.
"The cleverest owners will, like the Glazers, find a useful idiot to do all their dirty work - signing the right players and losing the wrong ones, hiring and firing managers, cutting the jobs that need to be cut - while they continue to rake in the spoils of ownership," read a piece in The Guardian on 6 January.
"But in no circumstances will a full sale ever be seriously considered. The ultimate aim of ownership in global football today is to stay an owner. The exit these investors seek is not an exit at all, but a kind of commitment-free lifetime tenure."
The parties have negotiated standard "drag along" and "tag along" rights. Expect the detail to be pored over by journalists and
Meanwhile,
Ratcliffe will likely be held to account over the refurbishment and expansion of United's Old Trafford ground, for which he is committing
Brailsford's star does not shine nearly as brightly as it once did - think
Indeed, take away the eye-catching project that broke the two-hour men's marathon barrier and there is really nothing to crow about, including at football clubs in
Football people will tell you football is different (granted, I hear that said from most sports about themselves - although footy's scale and wealth gives the claim extra bite).
The past season and a half at
History also suggests that the industry sees ingenues coming and has them on toast - my least favourite example being
First I heard from
DRS SAYS 'NOT OUT' And so it comes to pass, the failure of the
Former chair
So much for the efforts of three
Graves is one of the
SPANISH FLY Nothing to see here? Just because a nation or sport isn't found guilty of any doping violations, doesn't mean it hasn't a problem. The World Anti-
"We are well aware of deep-seated issues within Spanish anti-doping If they are not dealt with quickly and effectively, then it is clear there will be significant consequences for Spanish sport," WADA said on 5 January.
Doping rumours have swirled among the chatterati about at least four Spanish sports down the years.
The raw numbers in WADA's most recently published report on testing globally, covering 2021, does not tell this story though.
It's not just what you do, and how often you do it, but the way that you do it too - as WADA's beef with
One analysis of the arrangement concluded with a thinly-veiled insinuation that Ratcliffe was the Glazers' 'useful idiot'
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