Not even close to fact. Ashley never spent anything of his own, not one penny, without it being owed back to him - that's what the loan is. Everything else, to the last drop, has been earned by the club and spent by the club. This is my issue with hanging Ashley out to dry totally - yes, he's culpable for applying business logic to the nonsense that is football. In a perverse way, Ashley is actually trying to apply logical sense to a business model - it's not exactly his fault that Sky, BT, Gazprom, Arab oil, and so on has inflated football WAY beyond its' means. What he's tried to do is bring football in line, but he's on his own. NUFC are an attempt to make a profitable, commercial business. Football, at the top level, isn't a profitable commercial business - it is an advertising vehicle, a seat at the top table, exposure to the masses, a means to an end. What he IS culpable for is giving the debit card to Charnley and expecting the club to do ok. We make and therefore can spend more than enough to keep us in the PL. Competing? Unlikely. Trophies? Nearly impossible. But he stupidly assumed Charnley was capable of running a football club. By association, he has under-employed at the business end of the club. There is no FD. Ashley assumes he can run a club based on trust, not experience, and in football no regular laws apply.
Sorry mate, but I don't agree. Ashley owns the club, lock stock Fact!. He spent his own money buying the club. Fact! Weather he structured it as a loan to the club or not he put his hand in his pocket and handed over the pound notes to Shepherd and Hall so that's him spending his own money. Because he owns the club, then any money generated by it is his. He can take it out any time that he likes. Simply recall the loan. NUFC is a private company and whatever corporate way it may be structured the bottom line is it's Mike Ashley's company and he is free to do whatever he wants with it. Ashley freely admitted that his sole intention of buying NUFC was to advertise SD. So he was never trying to run a commercially successful model, you can tell that by the fact that SD banners are plastered all over the stadium yet they pay zero in advertising. He wanted the exposure that being in the PL brings just as much as the next bloke. We are his 'means to an end'.................... just as he hoped Rangers would be in Scotland. It's ALL about SD for him. He has zero affection for either club, its just cold hard business and its all about promoting his main business SD, he's not trying to 'change football' against the big nasty Russians or Arabs or any of that bollocks. Because if he really did want to be some sort of football pioneer he would have employed the very best people in the business to affect that change. People at the very top of their respective games. So we have had Chris Mort, a solicitor who knew nothing about football. Derek Lambeezy, who ran a casino and knew nothing about football. Dennis Wise, who isn't fit to lick Keegans managerial boots yet was brought in over his head. Joe Kinnear, Lee Charnley, Tony Jimenez ......................... need I go on. Oh and lets not forget changing the name of the stadium or flogging off expansion land on the cheap or getting into bed with Wonga, one of the most despised companys on the go. Yeah the guy is a commercial genius. All of the things that he does is either for the benefit of SD or it's done to run NUFC on the cheap or have people in place with no real idea of what they are doing so they will not question Ashley's word. So I will continue to 'hang him out to dry' because everything that has happened at NUFC since HE bought it is HIS responsibility. Its HIS people running the club. Its HIS 'structure' in place. And its HIS fault it's all come crashing down. People have short memories or are blinded by a few words of PR or a drunken interview on Sky. Its only my opinion and others may not agree.................... but I'm sticking to it until I see tangible evidence that something fundamentally has changed or he sells up and ****s off.
I certainly wouldn't argue with anything that you've said. The simple fact is that his running of the club has been negligent at best. All the crap off the pitch is one thing, but two relegations on his watch is unforgivable. Unfortunately, Ashley will always have apologists willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, with the luxury of someone like Charnley on hand as a Scapegoat. A case of blame the Tea Boy, not me, look I gave him £80m to spend and he screwed up.
He took over on 23rd May 2007. That's nine years. Two relegations. Average Premier League position of 14th (including year in Championship) since 07-08. 10 different managers, 12 different managerial periods (not counting Rafa's possibly imminent successor). Net transfer spending £53m (1.4% of his overall £3.8 billion wealth and about £6 million a year, remembering that it would be a negative net spend without the 73M net spent since this time last year).
