The Guardian of Truth

A day after I called for more clarity on Leicester City's takeover in my column in the Business, a national newspaper repeated the demand.

An article in the Guardian by David Conn yesterday gave an overview of the questions which surround Milan Mandaric's £39 million sale of the club to the Thai-led Asia Football Investments consortium.

Mandaric (pictured) has blamed the lack of details on the fact that his main focus is currently on satisfying the Football League's request for information on the new owners' financial backgrounds.

He said he should be able to provide a clearer picture in the next few days, when the League is expected to give the deal the green light.

Mandaric also told me yesterday that he would lose "far more than £5 million" as part of the takeover deal. The significance of the £5 million figure is that this was roughly how much the club's 48 previous shareholders lost as a result of the deal they agreed with Mandaric when he took control of the club in 2007.

Under the deal, the shareholders were initially paid £600,000 for their stake on the promise that if the club got to the Premier League by 2009-10 and stayed there for one season they would get another £5 million or so.

Mandaric had previously said he will sell his remaining stake (believed to currently be about 40 per cent) over the next two years. But yesterday he suggested he may leave City sooner.

This is interesting given today's reports the Serbian-American could be lining up a return to City's Championship rivals Portsmouth, who he sold in 2006 after taking them to the top flight, but have since suffered major financial problems.