This is important, however I don’t think getting access to capital would’ve been too much of a problem.Bingo. That answers the question that was puzzling me, of why we were invited, along with Chelsea, when the other 3 PL clubs (ignoring Spurs) hated us & have done their best to undermine us for years. Wouldn't even surprise me if Abu Dhabi capital was involved. Us being in was clearly a condition of the others getting the finance, whether the US-owned clubs like it or not. And the rush to do this, which I also couldn't work out was probably because some of these clubs were skint, with Spurs in particular needing to find £150m pretty sharpish.
And I now remember that one of the issues with 'Project Big Picture' was the proposal that key decisions could be taken by a handful of clubs, without others having a say. So it's not unreasonable to suppose the same thing happened here, and that us & Chelsea may have been sold the project as 'founder members' but we were anything but.
In fact I reckon we were very much seen as second-tier members, at the mercy of a small cabal, and that any financial gain from this could just as easily be taken off us. So we got cold feet and decided that it wasn't necessarily in our financial interest. Fan or other external pressure probably played little or no part in our own decision to pull out.
And therefore we weren't acting as some noble Trojan Horse, as I thought we might have been. It was far more likely to have been that the big £ signs in our eyes weren't quite as big as we thought they were. If that's the case then the judgement of our owners & execs in jumping into bed with these snakes, who've been actively trying to destroy us, has to be seriously questioned.
I think the bigger issue was needing to secure six teams because of the Premier League bylaws. On page 99 here:
B7: Notwithstanding the provisions of Article 27, the League may expel a Club from membership upon a special Resolution to that effect being passed by a majority of not less than three-quarters of such members as (being entitled to do so) vote by their representatives or by proxy at a General Meeting of which notice specifying the intention to propose the Resolution has been duly given.
Without 6 teams, the rest of the league could have voted all of the usurpers out of the Premiership. Explains why there were reports of offers to Newcastle to join before we finally agreed. They needed six to make sure they weren’t completely fucked when it all went to pieces.