As another day has gone by without any news of Sport Capital getting closer to completing a takeover of Leeds United, but rival consortium are likely to come back with an improved offer for the club.

Although David Haigh told his followers on Twitter yesterday that Sport Capital “remain as committed as ever to finalising this,” there doesn’t seem to be any end in sight to their negotiations with GFH, which are still dragging on due to some unspecified disagreement over the finer details of the sale.

And there is still no clarification as to what role the maverick Italian Massimo Cellino is playing in all this, if any. Initially it was assumed that he was attempting to buy a 75% in the club in his own right by outbidding Sport Capital, but then it emerged that he had in fact had talks with David Haigh and was involved in their bid in some way.

Has he joined the Sport Capital as an investing partner, or is he merely acting as advisor to that group? And what sort of advice would David Haigh want from a man who has sacked 34 managers in 20 years at Cagliari and found himself facing fraud charges after making a complete pigs-ear of his project to build the Sardinian club a new stadium.

We can at least be thankful that he hasn’t yet purchased a stake in the club. "Have I bought Leeds? I haven't completed anything at all and I'm not going to discuss it," he told La Nuova Sardegna. And QPR have denied reports that Cellino has already arranged to buy their reserve goalkeeper Julio Cesar. The West London Sport website have quoted Harry Redknapp as saying “That’s a crazy one. It’s absolutely out of the question.

While all this has been going on (or not) A rival group to Sport Capital are positioning themselves to make a second offer. That’s the consortium led by ex-Manchester United employee Mike Farnan and including Adam Pearson, ‘Welcome to Yorkshire’ chief executive Gary Verity, and backed by Lucas Radebe in some sort of public relations role.

They had a bid turned down in November but could come back with another offer as Sport Capital continue to stall. On Friday Farnan said on Twitter that his consortium were continuing to work in the background, saying he needed to maintain “radio silence for the sake of progress.”

It goes without saying that all this uncertainty will do nothing to help Brian McDermott has he tries to plot a course to get Leeds into the play-offs by the end of the season, as it’s almost certain that any deal to buy the club will be too late for him to improve the squad in this transfer window.

But one bit of good news is that West Ham have confirmed that they won’t be coming back with an increased offer for Ross McCormack. While the Scot might have liked the chance to play in the Premiership for the next three months, the money would come too late for Leeds to use it to improve the squad by the end of January, so we urgently need to keep hold of McCormack to stand any chance of reaching the top six.

Will we know the outcome of the takeover talks by the time we take the field against Ipswich Town tomorrow night? We hope so, but I doubt it’ll be worth holding our breath.

Photo: Action Images

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