Praise for Mike Ashley

It's a well known fact that the popularity of the owner of "Big Mike's Tat Emporium" is inversely proportional to sales at Greggs.

To be fair to him, he has done fantastic for the club financially, turned us from making large losses into near profit while challenging at the right end of the premier league. We'll probably never agree about the naming rights but that is our only real gripe about him currently imo.

 

I respect him as a businessman. And I respect the fact that when he'd painted himself into a corner and he had no other options he didn't actually just quit, but instead went off and rethought his plans and came back with a new administration. Those parts of the man are praiseworthy.

But I don't see why he should have praise heaped on him for being good at business. A successful club is good for his bank balance. It's not some sort of charity.

That said, he's probably the best owner that the club (so far) has had for a long while.

 

We were a Championship team purely thanks to Ashley screwing up the manager, bringing in a couple of clowns, an selling loads of our players - without replacing them!

Now he does what he Llambias said they would never do - and removes our home's name - the BBC etc won't use it - and for what? Is the club earning anything from this disgrace? No! Not a penny!

Even if Nike or someone else buy the rights to the name, how much money will that bring in? £10m? In this climate that is half the cost (fee and wages of one decent player). The likes of Liverpool get £25m a season with a shirt sponsor, and we'll chuck our ground's name for a fraction of that. Pure disrespect - he'll interfere with out black and white shirts next ...

Ashley is doing some things right, I've no problem in agreeing that, but he utterly despises us so to lick the guy's bum is really in our favour isn't it?