Dan Plumley has insisted that multiple unnamed investors will still want to step in if John Textor’s Everton takeover bid collapses.
The Crystal Palace co-owner has agreed on a period of exclusivity with Farhad Moshiri [David Ornstein, 15 August] but reports suggest that the Toffees are still holding talks with other parties [Paul Brown].
Although financial expert Plumley insists that alternative parties will remain interested, he admits that they could be tempted to bide their time with “ruthless” decisions on the cards.
“There will be multiple investors in the background that we’ve probably not even heard of yet,” Plumley exclusively told Goodison News.
“They will have been in and around the fringes of this for a while and waiting perhaps to see how some of this plays out and the takeovers that have kind of got started and then fell through don’t help the wider PR image of that to an investor coming in.
“There also will be some that consider themselves a potential option in the future if this deal doesn’t go off or if this deal doesn’t quite work.
I go back to that wider point and it’s something that I’ve touched on over the last 18 months to two years with Everton, people will often bide their time until things get really bad and really critical and then step in.
“We’ve talked about the precarious sporting position of the club, moving into the new stadium, all of those things will be in the mix and if you are airing on the side of caution, you might hold back a little bit longer and let that play out.
There are positives and negatives within that. Yes, there are still people there who want to step in if this takeover collapses again, but they may want to bide their time a little bit and see how it plays out over the next few months.
“That creates a lot of uncertainty and is not great for the football club, but in the cold, hard financial reality of it, these people are businessmen as well.
“They’ll be quite ruthless when they need to.”
Will John Textor complete his Everton takeover at Goodison Park?
While Textor seems incredibly keen to secure the controlling stake in the Toffees in the future, the American billionaire still has several sticking points to address before a deal can be completed.
If that remains the case, alternative investors will be keeping an eye on developments at Goodison Park as there remains a chance that they could swoop in if a deal cannot be agreed.
