Unbelievable

At risk of "being relegated from FTSE 100" according to this: http://www.standard.co.uk/business/sports-direct-issues-shock-profit-warning-after-deterioration-in-trading-conditions-a3151716.html We know that feel don't we Edit: if that were to happen I assume his share price would drop further as institutional investors who track the index would have to drop the shares?

SD peaked in August at 815p a share and is down around 46% since then. Ashley's holding (assuming its been constant at 55%) has fallen in value from about £2.68bn to £1.43bn, so that's a cool £1.25bn off his stake. By comparison, the FTSE100 is down 11% in the same period. A bit like the fans at NUFC, a lot of shareholders do not like the way he runs the business- some are vocal about it and others keep quiet as long as results are on track. But when things aren't performing, all those governance issues (working practices at Shirebrook, USC, appointing his daughter's boyfriend etc) all come to the fore. Did you find out how many shares he owns? I calculated it as around 577m based on that Guardian article I linked which said he had sold 2,6% of his stake or 15,4m shares early last year. He sold a 2.6% stake rather than 2.6% of his stake. Google Finance (it's what all the pros use....) has total shares at 598m and latest reports show Ashley holds 330m shares, so revising my earlier number the pain today is about £255m. And I agree with Loveit above- if he bought a chunk of shares not only would it support the price, it would give confidence that he still believes that is business model is viable. Understood. Cheers for clarifying.

His worth is down today but he isn't going to suddenly sell all his shares today. He's more likely to buy shares in SD while they are relatively low (from their highest). That's what he's done in the past. Since buying NUFC his worth has gone from over £1BN, to less than £1BN, to over £3BN. Shares are long term investments. I doubt he's watching his share value on a day by day basis. Could be, but then, don't you need cash to buy shares? It might not lead to him selling up the club, but I'm pretty sure investing in the transfer window is the last thing on his mind right now, so this will definitely impact the club one way or another imo.

Down almost 16% today. Seriously, he could well be in trouble here.

SD peaked in August at 815p a share and is down around 46% since then. Ashley's holding (assuming its been constant at 55%) has fallen in value from about £2.68bn to £1.43bn, so that's a cool £1.25bn off his stake. By comparison, the FTSE100 is down 11% in the same period. A bit like the fans at NUFC, a lot of shareholders do not like the way he runs the business- some are vocal about it and others keep quiet as long as results are on track. But when things aren't performing, all those governance issues (working practices at Shirebrook, USC, appointing his daughter's boyfriend etc) all come to the fore. Did you find out how many shares he owns? I calculated it as around 577m based on that Guardian article I linked which said he had sold 2,6% of his stake or 15,4m shares early last year.

Ok, so assuming this is correct he holds around 577 million SD shares. He's lost 70p per share today (403m) and counting. Since December 2nd he will have lost around 1.7 billion.

How many shares does he have? Wondering how much he is down since the start of December.

Down 13% now. According to this he owns 55,14% of SD shares. Don't know exactly how money, but he must be losing hundreds of millions today, and probably well over a billion since last month. Could this have an impact on NUFC? Surely he will be looking to sell valuable assets if this continues?

Ah, found why: http://www.ft.com/fastft/2016/01/08/sports-direct-warns-on-profits/

Another procent down inside 5 minutes. This is glorious. The cunt could be destitute by the end of the day at this rate

Holy shit, down almost 12% now: http://www.lse.co.uk/shareprice.asp?shareprice=spd Down from 737 on December 2nd to 452 right now and plumetting like a brick. Is this all down to "China" or is anything happening specific to SD?

At present, every single refereeing decision made is subjective. It shouldn't be about removing subjectivity, it should be about affording the referee the benefits of modern technology in order to make a better informed decision. The entire refereeing structure in this country is built upon the notion that the referee can't be wrong, it's thinking like this which has us in the mess we're in. People get things wrong, that's fine, but give them a better chance to get things right and the game will be better for it. Just book managers for frivilous challenges.

Where do you draw the line though? Get rid of obvious errors and naturally the focus will then move to less obvious ones. The stakes are so high that we could end up with anything being deemed a 'game changer'. Nah. Up to the referee to decide when he makes use of it and I think it's a good idea to allow teams to "force" the ref to have a look if they think they've spotted something big that may have been missed, such as a bookable offence or a clear foul in the build up to a goal. I would cap that at one per half, with none taken off when they are in the right. The way I see it currently refs hold far too much power in the game as their decisions frequently change the outcome of games, and as the more and more money comes into the game, so does the potential for match fixing by refs. I wouldn't be surprised at all if this was already quite a widespread phenomenon.

Regarding big calls I think the referee should be given time to see the footage himself. With modern technology surely this could be done on some sort of device (electronic watch?) he carries around with him on the pitch so as not to be too time consuming?

As much as I dislike Real Madrid as a club and think it would be a huge shame as he would probably end up warming the bench, it would probably be worth it just to see the look on Pardew's and Ashley's face. We'd have actually paid this f***er to leave and now he's plying his trade at arguably the biggest club in the world.

About time. It's important though that people realise that there will always be an element of interpretation and thus subjectivity involved in making calls, but at least things like obvious diving, stonewall penalties etc. should be a thing of the past. I think the (professional) game will be much better for it.

Just the 18 games this season right? We'll run a mile when they tell us their price and he isn't even that good.

We've baulked at Spurs' >10m valuation for Townsend but expect that we can get Shelvey from relegation rivals for a fee that will suit us? Aye rightio.

We obviously knew better so went for Riviere and Ferreyra that summer

GWWA

The irony is that we're only "financially stable" because of the huge increases in TV revenue which have been outside of his control. If it wasn't for that, this way of running a club would have been a surefire way of "doing a Leeds/Pompey".

Coincidentally, quite a few high street retailers have gone bust recently over here in NL. Some big names too. These massive companies apparently can't deal with percentage wise quite small drops in revenue. The online market isn't so restricted by national boundaries. It's not inconceivable that someone like Amazon moves into his market and pushes SD over altogether at some stage.

Come on! Give the guy at least some credit! He's worth 5.5 BILLION DOLLARS!!!! That's some luck he's got there! I agree with this actually: he is an amazing business man. I will say this though: he is also a bit of a one trick pony and a parasite in business. He sucks the life out of his competitors and every company he takes over to make his own company stronger. I respect him for the enormous wealth he has managed to amass, but by doing so has probably cost society and thousands of others dearly. He's successful, but I wouldn't exactly call him inspirational.

I only got into this thread to reply to one comment about him not "giving a f***". That's what all of my rambles over the last page have been in reference to. If rather than "not giving a f***" it would have said "results on the pitch don't matter much to him as long as we are in the PL" would you have reacted? Because that's what it effectively comes down to. Edit: what Santy said. I also think his attitude towards the fans and by extension the club is neutral at best, probably even negative. I can't even see him genuinely wanting to bring joy to the fans anymore for the insults he received early on in his tenure. He appears to be a very proud and petty manchild who has decided that he will hang onto us for his own gain only, going out of his way to frustrate the fans who dared to challenge him. Maybe that wasn't his original intention when he first bought us, but it's certainly how the relationship has been for a long time. It's all fucked up.