Has the financial collapse made
Little more than a week ago, Ashley wanted about £450m - now I understand a figure of between £280m and £300m could be enough.
In July 2007, Ashley paid £133m for the club and has since cleared off the loans, making a total of £243m.
They may be and enduring their worst start to a season for 53 years, but two bids are being prepared to buy .
One potential bidder is a British consortium, while another is a Singapore-based Asian billionaire.
This possible Asian bid involves the Israeli super-agent , who was responsible for bringing Roman Abramovich to Chelsea back in 2003. Abramovich had looked at Spurs, but was put off by the prospect of having to pay £150m and never made an offer.
The only surprising thing about the much-anticipated Uefa executive meeting in was that the press was kept waiting. Still there are worse places to hang around than the grand surroundings of the in the Place de la Comedie.
A press conference meant to start at 1215 French time did not begin until 1445, leading to much speculation that contrary to expectations, Uefa might have decided to move , after all.
But in the end, the briefings proved accurate. As predicted on this blog yesterday Ukraine and Poland were given a bit of a telling off, not even a yellow card.
Not very good at all, far too much still to be done, there must be tighter checks on progress... but nevertheless you can still hold .
That is the message that is likely to emerge from the executive committee on Friday as it considers .
The corridors of Regent Hotel in Bordeaux, where its members are meeting, may be buzzing with all sorts of talk and rumour but nobody expects the executive to just pull the plug on the first joint east-European hosting of this tournament
West Ham are to hold talks with government officials in October to discuss a possible move to the in Stratford after the 2012 Games.
The idea has been revived following much debate as to the stadium's post-Olympic use, with a debate sparked following Boris Johnson's election as and his decision to have an in-depth look at the Olympic project and in particular its legacy uses.
Insiders say the West Ham talks are at a very preliminary stage and do not mean the club would move there and that they are part of a wider consultation.
What is interesting about financial results is often not what they reveal but what they don't.
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As widely expected, the club has done well. Last season may have been trophyless but the club earned £223m. Much of this was from the new television deal, bringing in nearly £69m, helped by the strength of the euro coming in from Uefa's money.
Significantly, the Emirates Stadium is not only a fortress in terms of results on the field - they have lost only one competitive match in 58 there - but something of a cash cow. Matchday revenue last year was just under £95m. But in constructing the Emirates, Arsenal now have the biggest debt in the club's history - £318m.
All this talk of Indian businessman being interested in buying Everton seems very wide of the mark.
Speculation suggested that a member of the Ambani family, possibly Anils's son, would be at the club's Uefa Cup match against Standard Liege on Thursday, but my Everton sources tell me that is just not the case. Bill Kenwright, the Everton chairman, did receive a call from someone claiming to be an intermediary but nothing came of it.
Everton need a buyer but the man who could buy the Toffees out of his petty cash would be British billionaire .
is sending mixed messages for football.
Last week when the Premier League had their first meeting of the new season the talk amongst the bosses was that the foreign ownership of the league now at nine could rise to 13 or 14 by the end of the season.
That view does not appear to have been modified by the New York horrors.
People at the heart of English football, both directors and others, are keen to talk down any long term impact of the crisis on football.
We journalists are always told that we seldom allow facts to spoil a good story - yet, in the football business, facts are often not so much ignored, as distorted beyond belief.
The is a classic case in point.
Andy Burnham, the culture secretary who sparked this current bout of questioning of foreign ownership, wants the football authorities to look at their regulations, and yet rules out government intervention.
Meanwhile, Lord Triesman, the Football Association chairman, agrees the FA needs to do something, but says he would not do anything that discriminated on the basis of nationality.
And given these caveats
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