Is It Larsson Or Larsen?

I presume by now you are aware of the story about Pools owners supposedly being interested in Sheffield Wednesday which has been printed in the Daily Mail, if you not, you’d better have a read (Daily Mail story).

It’s a story that’s come out of nowhere and with a bit of luck will disappear back to nowhere before we’ve even had chance to contact the commercial estate agents.

A couple of things come to my attention immediately, for starters both the Daily Mail and Hartlepool’s very own Sunderland based evening rag the Hartlepool Mail have managed to spell the most important name in the whole story incorrectly.

Pools are apparently bankrolled by Norwegian Oil Millionaire Berge G Larsen, the Daily Mail and Pools Mail claim Sheffield Wednesday chairman Dave Allen is in talks with Berger Larsson over a share scheme which would see a cash injection into the Hillsborough club and force Mr Larsson to relinquish his shares in Hartlepool United.

Now I don’t profess to be an expert in this area, so lets presume it goes like this. Our Berge G Larsen is a major player in DNO (that is confirmed by the DNO website), you’ve got to think DNO are major players in IOR, IOR are listed as Pools owners. Therefore in accordance with league rules a person cannot have ownership of one club and more than a 10% stake in a second club.

It’s reputed the IOR have invested something like £6 million in Pools since they took over ten years ago, they’d need to put a zero after the 6 if there really were interested in Wednesday.

Of course Pools could have been a stepping stone to bigger things, the attendance at the World Football conference in Dubai each year and the entries into the Dallas Cup have both put Pools and their owners on the football world map, perhaps we have been an introduction into English football.

At this moment in time it’s all speculation and it’s very difficult to come to any conclusions. We have had our most successful period of our history under our current owners, obviously I hope it continues, if it’s time to move on, then we’ll cross that bridge when it’s been confirmed we’ve got to it.

IOR have become increasingly vocal over the council’s refusal to sell them Victoria Park, if they do pull out of Pools and state the problems with the council as one of the main reasons, there will be a lot of very unhappy voters when the next set of local elections come round.

Last nights attendance of 6903 will have pleased IOR, but Wednesday are a much bigger fish and still regarded as one of this countries ‘sleeping giants’, watch this space.