Person behind “South African bid” revealed?

In the world of politics and current affairs podcasts in particular, a broadcast at short notice reacting to unexpected and important developments in a story is frequently called an “emegency podcast’.

Well, I suppose this qualifies, albeit tenuously, as an emergency blog entry because there have been developments today (Sunday 20 June) in the story of the potential takeover of the club which has been bubbling away in the background for much of the summer.

From early in the morning, there were messageboard posts about how there had been some sort of breakthrough in the negotiations between one of the three consortiums supposedly interested in purchasing the club and Vincent Tan. Things then took a turn away from that with cryptic clues as to the identity of the South African born, America based and British home owning “leader” of what has become known as the South African consortium being posted on social media.

Shortly afterwards, a name was posted and things moved on quickly after that to the streaming of this

yesterday evening.

Rather than me explain what the podcast says , I would advise you to watch the first half an hour or so because that will explain where we, apparently, stand now as far as one of the consortiums trying to purchase the club is concerned.

Clearly, the first question that needs to be asked is “is this kosher?”. As far as I’m concerned, the answer is yes. I’ve been watching Si’s podcasts for well over a year now and I’d say that he produces balanced and watchable stuff on a variety of aspects of Cardiff City both on and off the pitch. I don’t always agree with him, but I appreciate that he is pretty well connected at the club given the long list of former players he’s been able to persuade to appear for things like fans evenings (Steve McPhail is the latest to agree to be a guest of Si’s in December) – he’s also hosted hour long interviews with Mehmet Dalman in the past.

Si boasts that he produces Cardiff City material twice a day, seven days a week and, certainly in recent times, this is true. It seems to me that, first, his business and media presence is growing and, second, he is too intelligent to risk all of that by indulging in the sort of “in the know” stuff which turns out to be anything but that and seriously damages the reputation of the person concerned – why would Si want to do that when he is making the progress that he maybe hasn’t done on the past?

I’d also add that the most reliable messageboard poster I know when it comes to things like identifying new signings also confirmed that Gary Otto was the name he had been given as the head of one of the interested groups. I’m also grateful to this person for posting this autobiographical note from our prospective new owner because Google searches for Mr Otto bring back very little of note!

Returning to last night’s podcast, I may believe the main body of what Si says, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t have a few questions about his comments.

In particular, he says that first contact was made between the parties on Christmas Eve last year, so the matter has been “live” for around seven months. He also speculates, quite reasonably I’d say, that the due diligence procedure has already taken place and yet claims that everything has been sorted and it’s all now down to Vincent Tan to make his decision on the offer.

However, Si then goes on to say that he thinks it will be months yet before any takeover is completed. I don’t get that if due diligence checks have, indeed, been completed and the parties have been talking since last Christmas.

As I say, there’s very little online information available on Gary Otto, but it seems like he’s done a decent job with Sutton United although they do find themselves in a similar position to when he took over (i.e. about halfway up the National League).

Based on the very little I could find about Gary Otto, it seems unlikely that he has the financial clout to run a League One club with designs on a quick return to the Championship by himself, but it has always been understood that there are two other parties involved in the South African bid that give the bid the means to provide that funding I mention.

So, it seems that it’s a case of wait and see now, but I’ll end with a couple of not very serious Gary Otto references.

First, having “announced my retirement” when it came to playing Football Manager about ten years ago, I bought FM24 and played it to death through much of last year. This meant I had a few saves where the club I was in charge of went through a change of ownership at some time during the game and, on each occasion, there was a transfer embargo placed on me for a period of two months or so – therefore, I think it is extremely likely that such a scenario would play out in real life as well.

Secondly, there’s a thread in one of the City messageboards I use whereby photos of players from the 80s and 90s are posted and the person who identifies said player has to then post a photo of a new player. I had to do that very early yesterday morning and, of course, as I did only last week, I picked a player, saved a photo of him and then omitted to post my reply to the thread! However, the player I chose at least six hours before any reference to Gary Otto appeared on Twitter was one time Birmingham winger, and scorer of a winning goal for them at Ninian Park about thirty years ago, Ricky Otto. A complete coincidence clearly, but if I do possess psychic powers which I could make a fortune from, I wish the powers that be would have told me about my super power fifty years ago!