The only "facts" I have are that £18m is essentially part of the relegation loan that Ashley paid into the club (along with another £22-25m) to survive that year with the wages we had and get us back to the Prem. The £18m is now to be repaid, I'd imagine, given we've spent not a fcking jot and banked another £20m from Cabaye. The commercial revenues alone see us in profit at around £12.5m, add to that the big TV bonus of around £50m, the sale of Cabaye @ £20m; he can comfortably pocket the rest of his "personal" loan, leaving the club with £111m debt. That debt, by the way, is still one of the lowest in the league; you consider Man U's debts are at around 8x or 9x this will give it some perspective. Arsenal still "owe" money, but after paying off the shorter term loans, they were able to bank more for player purchases.
As I have said before, if Ashley appoints a relevant Director of Football, I would be led to assume he isn't going to sell. However, he has made no move to appoint either a DoF, a new reserve coach and - crucially - is making no attempt to remove Pardew, in spite of utter contempt from the faithful. It is not the actions of a man interested in the long term. We'd have at least seen or heard of people being approached for these roles, particularly the lesser ones where perhaps people below Ashley will do the hiring, It seems to me very much as though there's a freeze on headcount - a very 'corporate' term but what that is absolutely paramount to any takeover. I've been at two different companies who did the same. In fact, it is very usual to see redundancies (player sales) as well, because it reduce the balance sheet down to healthy looking profits. But this is where I think Ashley - as usual - doesn't get it. Sheikh Mansour and Roman Abramovic, even John Henry, Stan Kroenke, EDIC, the Glaziers - NONE OF THEM bought their respective clubs for the balance sheet!!!!!!!!!
Bottom line is that, optimistically, we appear to be for sale. Due to it being financially driven, we may appeal to more people. Ultimately, however, a Prem club is about prestige and PR - fck knows how or why he can't find a buyer. But if we owe him no more than a £100m loan (added to the reduced value of the club), NUFC can be bought for probably around £250m, maybe even less. If Ashley decides that NUFC advertisement also carried a premium that he took advantage of (say £5m a year) and contributed to Sports Direct profits of around 1% of total growth, then his accountant may put an even more attractive figure on the club.
When all is said and done, however, he has to go. He has to be pushed, cajoled, encouraged out of this club. I agree that we look less attractive with boycott's; only someone with a Knight in Shining Armour complex would then give it a go, and as we're out in the sticks of England those people probably don't exist. I'd much rather see 52,000 fans take something symbolic - JD Sports carrier bags, for example. Or a deliberate boycott on the catering, make sure NOBODY buys a single item. March en masse AWAY from the ground when 90 minutes are done, not touch the club's bars. Similarly before the match, and encourage noise - lots of it - in singling out Ashley and Ashley alone for criticism, invent songs, give song sheets, keep 'em clean for the kids, all this kind of stuff.
Also offer bad publicity for Sports Direct, get into ground with placards that make up signs saying "Don't Buy Tat from Asheys' Pound Shop" and have the entire Gallowgate make it up for the cameras. Sing anti-SD songs, just hit him where it really, really hurts. Investigate the child labour stuff and get it pinned up on message board after message board, try and get Malysian/Indonesian fans involved so they can tell it how it is. All of this kind of thing will hit him hard - because he doesn't care about the club.
