Mark Douglas has shared a quite promising claim involving Mike Ashley after the latest round of rumours on the potential takeover of Newcastle United.
Co-writing in his latest piece for The Chronicle, the Toon journalist has shared that the PA news agency understands that Ashley believes that the sale of the St. James' Park faithful to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) group has been 'agreed' and that it 'simply needs to be rubber stamped by the governing body', ten words sure to be music to the ears of Newcastle fans.
Douglas adds that the current chief executive of Sports Direct 'remains focused' on selling the North East club to the KSA consortium and is currently pursuing legal routes into trying to do this after entering into an arbitration process.
Newcastle takeover hope?
While Ashley clearly remains committed to the original deal and wants to sell the Tyneside club, there is no guarantee that this will happen with the KSA group, given that a pathway is not yet cleared for the Kingdom's Public Investment Fund (PIF) to return to the table.
A lot may come down to whether the Magpies are successful in their pending arbitration case against the Premier League, which could provide a stepping stone for the bid to be approved.
Nonetheless, it will no doubt be interesting to see what the results of the hearing will be and thus the affect that it may have on the potential takeover of the Toon.