RBS, Royal Bank of Scotland, Government-owned is lining up a bid for the football team which owes it over two thirds of all its debts.

With Christian Purslow, Liverpool's managing director saying that the company needs to 'sort the wheat from the chaff' in bids received, RBS appear not to be waiting with a reported £237m owed to it in less than two months now on October 6th and not much time for a bid to be accepted.

"We have a number of bids for the club and the board is going to take its time to examine those extremely carefully. Our number one priority is to make sure we know what we would be getting into with any new owner. We take that deadly seriously." said Purslow to the press, "To know who they are, where the money is coming from, what their plans are and to establish that there is a real commitment for a very long-term stable and secure financial position for the club."

Whatever happens, the long-term future of the club appears to be out of the Americans, Tom Hicks and George Gillett hands. Instead the choice appears to be the Chinese, Arabs or Saudis with Indian conglomerate Subrata Roy and his Sahara Group having already declared themselves out after seeing the levels of debt.

"We have had a number of bids [and] will take time to examine those extremely carefully," added Purslow to the BBC's Radio Five Live.

RBS AWAITING

However with RBS' £237m debt pressing, Purslow denied any apparent time constraint or other issue with them:

"I am not going to put a time limit on it. We have excellent relations with our lead bankers RBS, we've been in constant dialogue with them, and I am extremely comfortable with that working relationship." he said.

However, with the Kirdi bid revealing that the would need at least a minimum of two months to assess the debt, the resulting deadline for RBS' bid - would appear to leave them out.

Interviewed by Bloomberg, Syrian businessmen, Yahya said that he was rejected twice before and put a two month minimum time frame before committing to anything. - the news was a blow as he had often been creditted with being closest to signing anything.

With only Huang the chinese consortium remaining and two or three other bids that appear less and less credible, reports today suggest that the bank itself may not be prepared to wait.

FTSE