George Caulkin has been speaking on the latest episode of Pod On The Tyne, and he confirmed that the potential buyers ‘knew that human rights would come up as a conversation, and they knew very well that piracy would come up as a conversation.’
Caulkin insists that the buyers knew all of these challenges and were told the Premier League’s tests ‘could take up to 30 days, and it has taken twice that’.
Therefore, he claims that the process has been ‘longer than they thought and longer than everybody thought’.
Here is what Caulkin had to say in full about what the buyers knew would be thrown at them:
“They knew that human rights would come up as a conversation, and they knew very well that piracy would come up as a conversation, so they knew all that.
“Just to repeat what we have said all along, they were told it could take up to 30 days, and it has taken twice that.
“So, has it been longer than they thought? Yes, it has been longer than everybody thought.”
Are you surprised to hear the buyers knew about the piracy issues?
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TIF Thoughts…
It seems that Amanda Staveley’s Saudi-backed consortium were prepared for all of these challenges that have emerged, but they thought that this process would have been done a while ago.
However, concerns over human rights have emerged from Amnesty International and Hatice Cengiz.
BeIN Sports raised the piracy issues, and a report by the World Trade Organisation proves that the Saudi government have direct links to a piracy station called BeoutQ.
This concern over piracy has caused the delay with Matt Slater, suggesting that the Saudis might have to make some concessions before their takeover is approved.
However, if Caulkin is to be believed, they were prepared for this, but they were not expecting it to take this long.