Sanctioned Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich has landed in Istanbul and could reportedly hold further talks with Muhsin Bayrak ahead of Friday's bid deadline.
Since Abramovich was sanctioned last week and more recently on Wednesday by the EU, multiple billionaires have been sizing up an opportunity that had been made more complicated by the UK government's involvement. However, football.london understands that the Raine Group will have the final and only say on who is to succeed the Russian oligarch.
Saudi Media, Todd Boehly's consortium and Nick Candy had been the hot names on the agenda so far this week but one name has come back into the equation that many Chelsea fans had forgotten about - Muhsin Bayrak. The Turkish billionaire had previously claimed that he had a deal to takeover the Blues at a '90 per cent' done rate before his good friend Abramovich was sanctioned.
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He said via Tribal Football: "We have reached a certain stage. Our law and finance department will start talks with theirs in London on Thursday. That's the way it is at this point. On Thursday, we will notify the Public Disclosure Platform (KAP).
"People are talking about it, we made some progress in the talks, and the world believes we have a 90% chance of completing the deal. Abramovich thinks the same." A couple of days later however, and when the news that all Chelsea fans dreaded was announced, it seemed as though Bayrak's Blues mission had fallen through by his own words.
"We're in a bad mood. The British government seized it. We were just about to finish the job, applications were made yesterday," Bayrak said, via Gercek Gundem. "A press conference was going to be held today, and the handover was going to be next week. I'm incredibly depressed."
Despite these latest comments by the Turkish tycoon, it seems as though Abramovich's latest venture since being spotted could potentially hint to behind the door talks going on between the pair. As per Rappler.com, Istanbul, where the Russian has recently flown to, is the site of AB Grup Holding, a company ran by Bayrak.
Putting two and two together, the report goes on to say that the man in question who has openly expressed interest in buying the Premier League club could use this latest opportunity to try and re-ignite talks with Abramovich,with it understood that the two have a good rapport. Sky News' latest report on Abramovich has also gone down the same line hinting that more Bayrak talks could be in the pipeline with a spokesperson for the interested party claiming that another meeting was 'planned' later this week.
With a net worth of around £8billion and monetary ventures in energy, real estate and cryptocurrency, it's not clear yet whether Bayrak will make an official offer to the Raine Group by March 18 but these latest hints indicate that it may not be over just yet for the highly keen billionaire.
