The Manchester United takeover race is heating up with Sheikh Jassim, Sir Jim Ratcliffe and any other interested party given until 9pm on Wednesday to submit their second offers.
And after that the picture around the club’s future ownership should become a lot clearer - even if there remains the possibility of the Glazer family deciding to stay put if a big enough bid does not materialise.
Raine Group, the merchant bank overseeing the process on behalf of the Glazers, are expected to decide on a preferred bid following this round of offers.
From there the incumbent custodians will evaluate its contents and the chosen prospective buyer would be granted access to confidential financial information about the club as part of their own due diligence.
That follows a very similar process to the one run by Raine when Chelsea was sold by Roman Abramovich to a consortium fronted by Todd Boehly and funded by Clearlake Capital last year.
Yet it could take much longer for a deal to reach completion regarding United. In regards to Chelsea, there was the additional pressures on the Stamford Bridge club being sold within a specified window because of the government sanctions placed on Abramovich.
There are also suggestions that Avram and Joel Glazer are not entirely convinced to part ways with a club their father took over in controversial circumstances in 2005. They believe that United is worth £6bn and remain open to doing a deal that would see investors take a minority stake that would ensure they could retain control.
Both Sheikh Jassim, a son of the former Qatari prime minister who was educated in the UK, and Ratcliffe, the head of petrochemical giant INEOS and a lifelong supporter of the club, have stressed they will not pay over the odds for the club. Yet suggestions are that the offers lodged later will be near £5bn.
That means a United sale will also smash the record sum paid for Chelsea, which was worth about £2.5bn with further investment commitments of £1.75bn agreed upon, and comfortably beat the $4.6bn (£3.8bn) paid by the Walton-Penner group to purchase the NFL franchise Denver Broncos last year.
Sources have warned that there could also be a number of anonymous bids made on Wednesday. Last week United officials, including chief executive Richard Arnold, met with a group representing Sheikh Jassim, who chose to stay away at this stage of negotiations, on Thursday for up to 10 hours and a group from INEOS, which included Ratcliffe, for six hours on Friday. But United may also have met with other groups in the past fortnight.
