West Ham Takeover

As promised, more considered musings on the Ali al-Faraj takeover rumour, delayed somewhat by my mother being rushed into hospital. (Some things do take priority over West Ham!) Do we want it or should we pray that he and Storrie stay well away?

Try "binging" the guy and Wikipedia offers the following option:

al-Faraj may refer to:

* Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani, Persian scholar.
* Abu Faraj al-Libbi, nom de guerre of a Libyan alleged to be a senior member of al-Qaeda
* Abu-al-Faraj ibn Al-Jawzi, Islamic scholar of the Hanbali school of jurisprudential thought
* Abu-al-Faraj Runi, 11th century Persian court poet who wrote Mathnavi
* Bar-Hebraeus, also known as Abu al-Faraj, catholicos of the Syriac Orthodox Church in the 13th century
* Jeshua ben Judah, also known as Abu al-Faraj, 11th century Karaite scholar, exegete and philosopher

Now none of those sound too promising to me! Most of them will only get to London if appearing in the British Museum in mummified form and the second one on the list sounds even less enticing! If it is him, before we know it, the Yanks will be declaring war on East London (although they would be guaranteed to only take out Tottenham fans as collateral damage!) and the victims of the IRA will be demanding a Tevez style payment for the supply of semtex!

Google throws up a more likely option, one Ali al-Faraj who is a "Phone Banking Services Manager at Alinma Bank, Saudi Arabia". The guy is on linkedin.com and lists his "contact settings" as

* career opportunities
* consulting offers
* job inquiries
* expertise requests
* business deals
* reference requests
* getting back in touch

Now wouldn't it be all too typical if he was our man, turning up in a tea towel and a dressing gown, waving a Suadi bank business card and forgetting to tell anybody that he works in a call centre! Of course, for good measure, the CIA would identify him as the al-Qaeda bod and launch a targetted airstrike anyway!

Full of Eastern Promise? I think you would find more in a Turkish Delight personally. I hope I am wrong but this sounds like a load of camelshit to me and, until we see the colour of his money, I would not get too excited. So who will take over our beloved club?

Heard the one about the Arab, the pornographer and the Yank...