Is Ashley actually in a position to save us?

January 29, 2009

Sports Direct cash flow numbers are here: http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/incomeStatement?stmtType=CAS&symbol=SPD.L

If I am reading it right not much is being drawn from that operation and although it is yielding fairly good profits its debts have mounted in recent years. NUFC has been making a loss for awhile now. Ashley's other businesses are probably much smaller in scale (wasn't arsed to do a search on them).

Now the question is how much Ashley has wealth (particularly cash) outside Sports Direct and NUFC that he could use now for player purchases (besides pumping cash to keep the club operating on daily basis)? Even if he is that rich 20m in cash must be a hell of a lot of money to take out of his own pocket.

NE5 · January 29, 2009

West Ham absolutely nailed it it seems.

They've got the same director of football setup, but went out and got a young manager who was comfortable with the whole thing as soon as Curbs decided it wasn't for him.

Now it's all coming together for them.

To be fair I did see an interview on goals on Sunday where Poyet confirmed that he was approached but he turned it down because of the protests etc.

Why we didn't try for someone like Deschamps I will never know.

what do you mean, "nailed it". Surely the idea is to be successful ?

PRL · January 29, 2009

The time to 'save us' spans from a period from September 4th to February 2nd. Where he can/could have appointed a proper manager.

He could have saved our season without even necassarily having to provide transfer funds. Could have just given a decent manager a contract.

The boat's pretty much sailed now, like. Cos he's been a dick and put his faith in Kinnear, our arses are going to be squeezing until the middle of May.

Perhaps if fans hadn't decided to protest and make the managers job unappealing then he would have appointed someone better, a few people did try and point this out at the time.

West Ham were in a similar position to us with the manager leaving for similar reasons, yet they seem to be doing so much better than we are and the only thing I can see that's different is their fans let the club get on with appointing a new manager and got behind him.

Equally, he could have still went on and appointed decent manager and win the fans back?

I think he knew the shit was hitting the fan finalcially an used the fans backlash as an excuse to sell up. Now the fat cunt is stuck with NUFC and us with him.

He knew from his own experience of buying the club that you don't want to walk into a club where a new manager you may not want has been handed a long term deal.

A far as he was concerned the club would be sold and Kinnear would do a job for 8 weeks until it went through.

I'm not sure how anyone can argue that if the fans didn't protest and Ashley putting the club up for sale that we would have got a better manager than Kinnear in through the door, as I've said that's the only difference between us this season and West Ham.

what you mean is any good manager would be put off by working for an owner like Ashley because he had been exposed as someone without the desire to capitalise on the size of the club.

Terim and Deuchamps were both interested at the time of Keegan walking so that doesn't quite back up your opinion.

Interested until they talked to Ashley.

I don't remember hearing about either speaking with Ashley as he was waiting to speak to keegan the night before the Hull match.

By 'waiting' i assume you mean getting fucked up in a tacky nightclub in the states with a bunch of low rent rent-a-whores quaffing all the booze he could fill them with... That type of 'waiting' yeah? Whilst Keegan was obviously unavailable

Ashley was on business through Sports Direct I thought? Unless he shouldn't be going out at night while out there.

When he came back it was reported that Keegan was out in Spain.

There was me thinking that the majority of reports pointed at him being in LA to try and break into the film industry... An industry he knew nothing about and probably decided he wanted involvement in on some kind of whim... But then again, what sort of savvy businessman would do that, eh?! It's not like he had previous...

Also, whatever reason he was there, obviously wasn't something that couldn't hold off for a MASSIVE lash up (we saw the bill, after all), so one would have thought priority would lie in returning to one of his biggest single assets which was on the brink of implosion and certainly not appearing in public making a twat of himself when he would have known it would have made the situation a whole lot worse.

So... Keegan 'resigned', he fucked off to the states, got fucked with his mates and didn't deal with the situation, had his mates release one of the most petty and juvenile statements to ever come out of a football club, came back and failed to reach a compromise with Keegan and then threw a massive fucking hissy fit and put the club up for sale when the crowd dared to question his intentions towards the club?

pretty sure he was out there for something to do with Sports Direct, the whole film thing was because he met someone while out there who put the idea to him iirc.

Still he employs people to run NUFC for him and can't drop everything at the drop everything from his main business because Keegan's throwing his toys out of the pram again, I can understand why you can't see that he's done any wrong though.

Ha, how hypocritical, you spend an entire thread with your Hear No Ashley, See No Ashley, Speak No Ashley hat on then bring it back to how I view Keegan! I am not arguing for / against Kevin Keegan and whether his decision was right or wrong, i'm arguing against what Ashley has done to the club, how he has handled events since the Keegan incident and what he should do to fix it. You're so intent on placing blame on anyone's shoulders other than Ashley that the whole topic has once again descended. You are turning into another agenda-driven poster intent on arguing the same point into the ground repeatedly... I understand that you disagreed with the masses when the whole thing kicked off with Keegan and that in time a lot of people have come round at least to partially seeing and agreeing with your point of view and i totally respect that, but to carry on in the way you are is utterly tiresome, if you see no fault in the way that ashley has run the club in the last few months then you are more myopic than any other poster on here, which takes some doing. Why not just accept that whilst others (myself included) admit that Keegan was not faultless, neither was Ashley and ever since the incident he's done the square root of fuck all in solving the problem

Baggio · January 29, 2009

The time to 'save us' spans from a period from September 4th to February 2nd. Where he can/could have appointed a proper manager.

He could have saved our season without even necassarily having to provide transfer funds. Could have just given a decent manager a contract.

The boat's pretty much sailed now, like. Cos he's been a dick and put his faith in Kinnear, our arses are going to be squeezing until the middle of May.

Perhaps if fans hadn't decided to protest and make the managers job unappealing then he would have appointed someone better, a few people did try and point this out at the time.

West Ham were in a similar position to us with the manager leaving for similar reasons, yet they seem to be doing so much better than we are and the only thing I can see that's different is their fans let the club get on with appointing a new manager and got behind him.

Equally, he could have still went on and appointed decent manager and win the fans back?

I think he knew the shit was hitting the fan finalcially an used the fans backlash as an excuse to sell up. Now the fat cunt is stuck with NUFC and us with him.

He knew from his own experience of buying the club that you don't want to walk into a club where a new manager you may not want has been handed a long term deal.

A far as he was concerned the club would be sold and Kinnear would do a job for 8 weeks until it went through.

I'm not sure how anyone can argue that if the fans didn't protest and Ashley putting the club up for sale that we would have got a better manager than Kinnear in through the door, as I've said that's the only difference between us this season and West Ham.

what you mean is any good manager would be put off by working for an owner like Ashley because he had been exposed as someone without the desire to capitalise on the size of the club.

Terim and Deuchamps were both interested at the time of Keegan walking so that doesn't quite back up your opinion.

Interested until they talked to Ashley.

I don't remember hearing about either speaking with Ashley as he was waiting to speak to keegan the night before the Hull match.

By 'waiting' i assume you mean getting fucked up in a tacky nightclub in the states with a bunch of low rent rent-a-whores quaffing all the booze he could fill them with... That type of 'waiting' yeah? Whilst Keegan was obviously unavailable

Ashley was on business through Sports Direct I thought? Unless he shouldn't be going out at night while out there.

When he came back it was reported that Keegan was out in Spain.

There was me thinking that the majority of reports pointed at him being in LA to try and break into the film industry... An industry he knew nothing about and probably decided he wanted involvement in on some kind of whim... But then again, what sort of savvy businessman would do that, eh?! It's not like he had previous...

Also, whatever reason he was there, obviously wasn't something that couldn't hold off for a MASSIVE lash up (we saw the bill, after all), so one would have thought priority would lie in returning to one of his biggest single assets which was on the brink of implosion and certainly not appearing in public making a twat of himself when he would have known it would have made the situation a whole lot worse.

So... Keegan 'resigned', he fucked off to the states, got fucked with his mates and didn't deal with the situation, had his mates release one of the most petty and juvenile statements to ever come out of a football club, came back and failed to reach a compromise with Keegan and then threw a massive fucking hissy fit and put the club up for sale when the crowd dared to question his intentions towards the club?

pretty sure he was out there for something to do with Sports Direct, the whole film thing was because he met someone while out there who put the idea to him iirc.

Still he employs people to run NUFC for him and can't drop everything at the drop everything from his main business because Keegan's throwing his toys out of the pram again, I can understand why you can't see that he's done any wrong though.

Ha, how hypocritical, you spend an entire thread with your Hear No Ashley, See No Ashley, Speak No Ashley hat on then bring it back to how I view Keegan! I am not arguing for / against Kevin Keegan and whether his decision was right or wrong, i'm arguing against what Ashley has done to the club, how he has handled events since the Keegan incident and what he should do to fix it. You're so intent on placing blame on anyone's shoulders other than Ashley that the whole topic has once again descended. You are turning into another agenda-driven poster intent on arguing the same point into the ground repeatedly... I understand that you disagreed with the masses when the whole thing kicked off with Keegan and that in time a lot of people have come round at least to partially seeing and agreeing with your point of view and i totally respect that, but to carry on in the way you are is utterly tiresome, if you see no fault in the way that ashley has run the club in the last few months then you are more myopic than any other poster on here, which takes some doing. Why not just accept that whilst others (myself included) admit that Keegan was not faultless, neither was Ashley and ever since the incident he's done the square root of fuck all in solving the problem

I've never claimed that Ashley is faultless, deciding to give in after the protests was a mistake as I don't think it was something that he couldn't ride out, I also think the communication with the fans could have been far better as we've seen the difference between when Mort was here.

I also think it was a mistake by whoever it was who signed someone without the managers say so even if I do think it's important to have someone at the club to build up an academy and scouting network that we've been lacking for years, I've never claimed that anyone was faultless in the way things have been handled.

quayside · January 29, 2009

For anyone who doesnt believe Mike can stump up £20 million! ffs it wouldnt even scrtach the surface of his interest on personal wealth.

"Ashley would normally be worth £1.527 billion. We knock that back, however, by the £129m he was reported to have lost recently betting on the share price of HBOS bank. " http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/specials/rich_list/article3796842.ece

The question is not if he can? it is does he want to?. Likeevery other nufc fan I desperately want him to stick his hand in his pocket, but holding up a banner and telling him hes a c*** is not going to do it! We are the club and lets not forget it, so this Sunday lets make it clear to him hes welcome back here with his cheque book. Because lets face it everything else has failed.

Meaningless link. Firstly its dated April 2008, and you may have noticed that the financial world is a different place now. Secondly the press haven't got a clue. He got £900 million when Sports Direct floated. How does anyone know whether he's spunked most of it on gambling, doubled it with shrewd investments in the stock market (he'd have to be pretty f*cking clever with whats happened in the last few months mind) or given it to a dogs home?

The total market value of his holding in Sports Direct is now only worth about £200 million, having been 6 times that a couple of years ago. Don't believe what you read in the press when it comes to people's wealth.

January 29, 2009

For anyone who doesnt believe Mike can stump up £20 million! ffs it wouldnt even scrtach the surface of his interest on personal wealth.

"Ashley would normally be worth £1.527 billion. We knock that back, however, by the £129m he was reported to have lost recently betting on the share price of HBOS bank. " http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/specials/rich_list/article3796842.ece

The question is not if he can? it is does he want to?. Likeevery other nufc fan I desperately want him to stick his hand in his pocket, but holding up a banner and telling him hes a c*** is not going to do it! We are the club and lets not forget it, so this Sunday lets make it clear to him hes welcome back here with his cheque book. Because lets face it everything else has failed.

Meaningless link. Firstly its dated April 2008, and you may have noticed that the financial world is a different place now. Secondly the press haven't got a clue. He got £900 million when Sports Direct floated. How does anyone know whether he's spunked most of it on gambling, doubled it with shrewd investments in the stock market (he'd have to be pretty f*cking clever with whats happened in the last few months mind) or given it to a dogs home?

The total market value of his holding in Sports Direct is now only worth about £200 million, having been 6 times that a couple of years ago. Don't believe what you read in the press when it comes to people's wealth.

That was an example of his wealth not the sum of it. Nobody knows his wealth, sports direct is not his only intrest, his fortune is built on brands, i dont see adidas or umbro going bust do you? the list is an estimate based on what they believe he owns, and the share price etc. By their own admission he wouldnt speak to them and nobody knows his personal wealth.

My point is he can easily afford to pump £20 - 30 million into the club without even thinking about it. We just have to try and encourage him...

Parky · January 29, 2009

He never imagined he'd still be here tbh. It probably never entered his head he's be using his personal wealth. They way they are carrying on is like NUFC has no income from TV, merchandising, tickets etc....