Mandaric poised for Foxes buy-out

Milan Mandaric hopes to be the new Leicester owner by noon today and has already set his sights on getting the club into the Barclays Premiership.

The former Portsmouth owner has been involved in talks with the Foxes for months and was thought to be on the verge of taking over at the end of January.

That deal was put on hold when it was revealed that the Serbia-born businessman had returned to his home city of Belgrade to attend to his seriously-ill mother.

But with a press conference set to take place at 12 noon at the Walkers Stadium, Mandaric finally looks set to assume control and begin his quest to bring top-flight football to the east midlands club.

Mandaric, who stressed that no deal was yet done, told Sky Sports 1: “I’m not here to take the club in the Championship division. It’s a great division, very competitive but my ambition is higher than that. If I didn’t feel I could help I would not be buying the club.”

Mandaric arrived at Portsmouth with similar ambitions and, in partnership with Harry Redknapp, made Pompey an established Premiership outfit.

His association with Portsmouth ended last year when he sold his stake to Alexandre Gaydamak, who had already bought half of the club, and he has been keen to get back into football ever since.

He spoke about his interest in the Foxes as long ago as November but a series of setbacks have prevented the deal being finalised.

Mandaric became frustrated at the lack of progress at the start of 2007 and publicly stated that the stop-start nature of the takeover had cost the club a number of targets in the January transfer window.

But that prevarication seems to be over, leaving the way for Mandaric to begin work.

He said: “Things are going forward and I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to bring everything to a final conclusion but we’re not there yet. There are a few legalities to be overcome but I hope they will be just formalities.”

Mandaric is thought to be paying around £25m (€37.5m) for Leicester and although he would not be drawn on details he did suggest that manager Rob Kelly would not be an immediate victim of his reign.

He said: “I don’t like to talk about money, it’s too premature to talk about that. I need some time to talk about other things. It’s been a stressful process.

“First I’d like to own the club then I can talk about details. Right now I don’t see any changes to be made (managerially).”