Matt Slater has been speaking on the latest edition of The Athletic’s Pod On The Tyne to try and make sense of the failed takeover by Amanda Staveley’s Saudi-backed consortium.
Slater was brought on to discuss many issues around the deal.
One of the things he talked about was the Premier League’s offer of arbitration to the consortium that they outlined in their response last Friday.
The Athletic reporter seemed to dismiss one suggestion that the arbitration could have taken 12-18 months.
It seems then that Slater believes that arbitration would have slowed the process, but it might not have gone on for that long and would have given the consortium the chance to prove PIF and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) were separate in front of a third party.
He said: “They chose not to argue their case that PIF does not equal KSA in front of a third party.
“Now that, of course, would have slowed things down, but this idea that arbitration has to take 12-18 months is not true.
“I’m sorry, we’ve seen it in umpteen other cases, be it big doping cases before Olympic Games, or trying to resolve the Manchester City situation before the next Champions League season kicks off; it can and has been done, but they chose not to take that offer up.”
Do you think arbitration was a fair offer from the PL?
No, they should have made a decision first
Yes, they could have resolved everything
TIF Thoughts…
The consortium’s response to this offer from the Premier League for arbitration was to withdraw, and after the statement was released, they accused the PL of trying to ‘kick the can down the road.’
However, Slater does not think that and believes that this was an option for the consortium to take, and they chose not to.
However, one point that should be made is that the PL waited nine weeks before they came up with this offer while telling the consortium that everything would be fine.
So, that seems to be a bit dodgy, but still, we agree with Slater that the consortium could have taken up the offer (13:10) of arbitration.