It's completely surprising and uncharacteristic that something involving the Glazers would be long, tortuous, and drawn out. I'm shocked.
That said, they need money. And they don't like spending their own. And it's not because Old Trafford is leaking like people on the internet think, I don't think they care about that so long as it isn't shut down they will sell out. The problem is the club isn't profitable and they are getting real close to negative equity on the balance sheet (I don't know if you guys noticed, but they did delay the most recent annual financials a month from when they normally come out, and they did lose money although not enough to put them upside down yet in the balance sheet). If you noticed, the reports had Sir Jim both buying shares and injecting equity into the club, which would improve the balance sheet. Basically, if you assume they won't spend their own money (a pretty safe assumption) they either need to do a deal with Sir Jim or go crawling back to Qatar; I don't think doing nothing is really viable longer than a year or two. Plus… we aren't getting Champion's League next year, so next year will probably be a lot worse financially.
Edit: I say we aren't getting Champions League… we aren't there right now, we are supposedly planning to do nothing in January, and most of the teams at the top appear to be planning on doing more than getting nothing. So, you know, never say never, but… at minimum it's looking bad, right?
