Business success involves a hell of a lot of luck. Being in the right place at the right time with the right people around you can make even a complete moron a lot of money. With us, Ashley seemed to be content to rely on his luck rather than good management and his luck just ran out.
The situation reminds me a bit of what happened with Alan Sugar a few years ago, when he bought Spurs. He ended up having to sack Terry Venables, who was the fans' favourite, and found himself out of control of his own business. Like Ashley, he was glad to get out in the end.
The only criterion for success in a business is making money. With a football club, success is trophies and there's a degree of customer involvement and interest in decisions which would normally be entirely up to an owner.
True.
Tbh I can understand people thinking that Ashley is deliberately running the club down because his decision making is so catastrophic that it seems inconceivable that he thinks he is doing the right things. But he is a trader and a chancer who got lucky in a market he understands. He thinks that means he has ability to run something else which he doesn't understand and like others before him (Sugar being one as you say) he is very wrong. People like Ashley are used to making decisions in their own time and in their own way, those that work for him know that and set things up around him accordingly. But in a business like a football club decisions are absolutely time critical and success depends upon the assets of the club being moulded into a cohesive unit (and not being viewed as a potential profitable resale). Ashley, though rich, isn't really very clever at all and I have thought since the word go that he was completely out of his depth owning a Premiership club.
I'd kind of agree with your conclusion that there's a different skill-set needed to run a football club, when compared with running a business, and that Ashley has fallen short. I don't think it's the time pressure factor that's significant though, and I wouldn't say that Ashley has necessarily been lucky in his business life, any more than Sugar was lucky. In business, they each saw opportunities neglected by other people and went for it hell for leather.
The problem with a football club is that it is only partly a business. The other part is a kind of community institution in which the fans have a big influence, and in that respect it's like running a public service. The strain in running a public service is that you have the press, the government and the public on your back, demanding that you run things in a certain way, and you're not your own master. So a lot of what you would like to do has to be weighed up and compromises reached. So you get the worst of both worlds - you have to pick up the tab at the end of the day, but you don't get the free hand that you would get in business.
Like you said, maybe Ashley just doesn't have the kind of brain that can anticipate that kind of difficulty and deal with it. He's also used to shunning the limelight, and may not have the kind of thick skin you need in that very public position. I didn't like Shepherd, but he did have the hide of a rhino when the criticism started flying.
Strictly in the world of business, appointing Wise and Keegan together might have made a lot of sense. Keegan would produce an entertaining product for the customers and Wise would look after the long-term strategy and the finances. But in practice, that was a disaster. Keegan is more than an employee - he's a public figure with a lot of support and he wasn't averse to using that status to try to get what he wanted, despite what may have been written into his contract. Ashley has not been in control since that point, because he was never going to win a PR battle with Keegan. It's just not a situation that occurs in the business world.
Great response bobyule.
Just a couple of points of clarification:
I don't know so much about Sugar but I think Ashley was lucky. The flotation valuation of Sports Direct was way in excess of reality as subsequent results have shown (pre recession too) and he coined nearly a £billion in cash on the back of that.
Also my point about decisions in football being time critical was more to do with planning the timing of decisions so that they are made at the best time for the club, given that there is a clear cut season, transfer window, pre season training etc. The timing and significance of these is known well in advance. And if you do have an unexpected event (e.g KK departure and JFK illness) mid season it becomes a matter of urgency to sort something out quickly. The run of results under Hughton's stewardship post KK where we lost to Hull and Paul Ince's Blackburn at home was a case in point.
Your second para on the difference between a football club and other businesses is about as good an analysis as I've ever read tbh.
Each of Ashleys shops make around £15-18k a day on a weekend your looking at over £20k a day and a replica shirt release day the shop in that area can make around £10k from the shirt sales alone. That's not luck. He has been able to make loads of money before the shops were floated from hard work hunting for grey market merchandise to flog in this country for dirt cheap then buying out companies to allow him to produce stock for next to noubt and sell it for huge profits. This is not luck.
