West Brom back on the open market amid Guochuan Lai price dispute
A price dispute between the top brass at West Brom has seen the club miss out on a potential buyer as a disastrous season continues its course.
It has long been mooted that owner Guochuan Lai is willing to sell the club with the Guardian reporting in November that talks were being held with an American consortium over a £150million takeover.
But events have quietened down in recent times and it seems talks have reached an impasse due to a disagreement between Lai and executive director Xu Ke.
As reported on the Daily Mail website the pair are at war over the price that should be paid for the club and that quarreling has seen one potential buyer step away after their exclusivity period expired without an agreement being reached.
One factor that has complicated matters is the unknown of which division the club will be plying their trade next season – an instant drop to the Championship is likely but a Premier League stay is not out of the question yet, at least mathematically.
Two different prices need to be agreed with rebate clauses to be triggered in the event of relegation, but the positive is that there are still three parties that retain an interest in purchasing the club.
More misery
This needs to end – the club can’t keep spiralling into a state of nothingness.
Lai took over from Jeremy Peace in 2016 but his time at the club has been a disaster.
Under his guidance we have dropped out of the Premier League into the second-tier after an eight-year stint and in our first season back in the Championship we failed to make achieve instant promotion.
We stumbled over the line last season to sneak into the automatic spots but our return to the Premier League has been an utter disaster as we lurch from one mess to the next.
Slaven Bilic was sacked in December to make way for Sam Allardyce but that has had little effect on our form as we sit 19th and eight points behind the last survival place with 10 games remaining.
Recruitment has been poor with our only successful signings this season being the loan captures of the likes of Conor Gallagher and Okay Yokuslu.
Not enough money was invested in the summer to make us viable survival candidates – according to Transfermarkt £37.93million was spent but that does not tell the whole story as the majority of that was used to convert the loan deals of Matheus Pereira and Grady Diangana into permanent ones.
Lai needs to agree a purchase price and sell – fast.
Only then can we progress.
In other West Brom news, our Super Fans react to Saido Berahino’s public plea for an Albion return.
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