Social media is atwitter (pardon the pun) over a story in the Guardian this morning that appears to hint that Tottenham Hotspur could be the subject of a purchase bid from current majority stakeholders ENIC. The story suggests that a group of “private” Qatari-based investors are potentially interested in a bid for the club, and that they would prefer to keep Daniel Levy on board as “Executive Chairman” even after the takeover is complete.

This story has rustled quite a few jimmies in the Tottenham fan base, and for good reason. The piece outlines a hypothetical that would manage to piss off virtually every single fan — a moral and ethically challenged petro-state-based takeover of the club that somehow would result in Daniel Levy staying on as the head of operations. Can you imagine?

And that, in part, is why it probably won’t happen. It’s worth being skeptical of this piece and not get too concerned over what it says. Here’s why.

For starters, the piece is long on sensationalist content, but very, very short on actual details. This piece has EVERYTHING: takeover rumors! Qatari businessmen! Daniel Levy! But notably, it doesn’t say who the Qatari investors are, apart from that they’re apparently “not Qatari government-backed,” something I have deep skepticism about from the jump, and doesn’t even state that a bid is forthcoming — merely that the investors are “in talks” with the club.

We’ve been here many, many times over the past decades. Stories about interest in a potential takeover from ENIC have popped up numerous times over the past 15 years. You probably remember some of them — Cain Hoy, Iranian businessman Jahm Najafi, Sheikh Jassim, various random American-based consortia that have popped into the news and then gradually faded away as the bides either materialized or interest waned. None of them panned out. I’m skeptical that this one is anything either, and that this group of non-governmental rich Qatari actually have enough money to make a serious bid.

Consider: if this were real, we’d probably be reading stories about an actual bid for the club, not vague news pieces about prospective bidders wanting to keep Daniel Levy on as chairman. My guess is that there are some Qatari businessmen sniffing around, but they likely aren’t ready to make a bid large enough to entice ENIC to actually sell the club. This piece feels like it’s the result of someone from the Qatari side of the issue shopping a story around to various English media sources.

Now, maybe this rumor is real. It could be! One of them eventually will be! The club will eventually be sold, and the nature of football business is that it’s very likely to be to some group, individual, or nation-state that is going to be pretty gross. There’s a small chance that I’m wrong about this, and I could look pretty foolish in the coming weeks.

But I doubt it. The club, at any rate, is very unlikely to comment on any “talks” until there’s something concrete that they can talk about. Until you hear solid news that there’s an actual bid for the club that’s likely to be accepted, it’s in your best interest as a fan to remain deeply skeptical of stories like this one that have big headlines, but are very skimpy on the details.