Off Topic Ashley and Club PR

So Ashley sacks the then PR company from St James when we were paying £200,000 a year.
Ashley Buys the KBA PR company and then hires them and they charge NUFC £500,000 a year as well as then having their own man at all the press conferences ( Bishop).
Are there no depths to which Ashley will stoop to milk us. ie, Advertising and PR. I fear not

https://t.co/tG3S9VZbvx

 

And yet people still believe that good old 'Mike' doesn't take a penny out of the club .................. those are the most deluded of all.

PR, free advertising, land grabbing .............. it just goes on and on.

 

Shhhhh, Pouchy may hear you.

 

Fat ****

 

Seems fair enough to me. If I was running a football club I’d want to control the PR. Do you not think the other clubs are doing the exact same thing? Man U did this for years, Fergie was massive on it.

 

But the club is now paying Ashley £500,000 for what we only paid £200,000 for. ???????

 

Better PR. Better control. More money.

We obviously had amateurs in for years looking at our PR.

I’m not sure I want to take much from some anti Ashley campaign who have basically got the hump because we are not able to spend to compete with the big boys. We got left behind years ago, the Chinese, Americans, Russians and Arabs didn’t want Newcastle. They preferred the big cities. I don’t know why everyone doesn’t just accept and get over it.

 

Why should we accept not being able to compete financially with the Bournemouth's, Brighton's and Huddersfield's though?
Whatever money TV gives us, we must rake in at least £250k more than they do every home game.
There might be a number of 'PR' style contracts just milking our income into certain 'Mike Ashley friendly' accounts.

 

I don't know whether £500k represents value for money. Where does that stand against the other 19 premier league teams, in particular the ones who we would wish to be considered in the same sort of league with? I think that is a much more relevant question.

 

I think we will compete when we get our hands on that money. We’ve spent as much as those clubs in spend only in recent times.

If you look at our outlay year on year since McClaren we’ve spent probably 160m odd. We just haven’t spent well. Of course people then point to sales, but Spurs and Southampton have been in profit too. We just haven’t spent our money well.

It’s uncomfortable for the fans to accept this so they lash out at Ashley and hold up stupid Keegan quote flags. The reality is the bloke is giving the club every chance financially. If we stay up we will spend big again using the TV money. If we don’t spend it well again I’m sure that will be Ashley’s fault again. Of course he appoints these managers, deal makers and allies these managers to pick the scouts in Rafas case, so he us ultimately responsible.

 

Astounding.

Obviously this new PR firm are twice as good as the previous one

 

Would suspect that most PL clubs will have their own PR staff as its an integral part of a big club’s activities.
Surprised (although I shouldnt be) that we outsource this and smells very dubious when Ashley buys a PR firm and immediately awards them our contract. Now if he had bought the PR firm and made it part of the club it might make it a lot more palatable.
I don’t have a problem with owners making money out of their clubs but do it in a way that doesnt smack of enriching yourself at the clubs expense.
Same with the Stadium advertising - dont make out its okay as you are not charging interest on the loan - charge the interest and then pay the going rate.

 

Problem is it isn't just the big boys. Huddersfield, Brighton, West Ham, etc also buying players for lots more money than we are paying.( In the case of this window we spent nothing on transfers at all apart from loan fees ).

 

The people who say its ok to offset the advertising against the loan interest neglect the fact that it makes our business development department lazy. Where other clubs will be looking to increase sponsorship income and identify replacement sponsors for contracts about to end ours just assume that the Ashley/Sports Direct deal is the best we can get.
Of course I am sure our new PR representatives will tell them that we could improve our image by dropping the links with Sports Direct - a company that has suffered bad press on issues ranging from use if child labour to zero hours contracts. Or maybe not!

 

That isn’t the case though as above. West Ham should as they’ve had consistent PL TV money.

 

It IS the case with Brighton and Huddersfield though. Both of those clubs are new to the Prem AND have much lower ticket income than we have. They are both much smaller clubs than we are, but they have both out-spent us to keep their Prem place.

 

Oh youve ****ed it, get ready for transfer funds to be extrapolated over three seasons and talk of money spent to be deemed more important than any money made back

 

Exactly Rob. We have outspent these clubs by a significant amount. We just chose to spend the majority of our money getting out of the championship. We may not agree with it, but that is Rafa's choice. Although I do suspect he spent it thinking Ashley would just spend on the never never and outspend them again. He was wrong and misguided to think it if he did.

Ashley is simply true to his word. He spends what we generate.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-43029559

E-Sports are the next big thing for Sports Direct.

Splendid.