Mike Ashley

[HawK]

Still amazes me how many people still give money to Mike Ashley. He said he'd turn the club into an advertising vehicle, and that's exactly what he's done. He's using the clubs own turnover and status to pay for his initial purchase, line his own pockets and everyone still sucks it up, it honestly makes me laugh how gullible and mindless most of 'our' fans are. Matchday revenues trousered, TV money trousered, player sales trousered. Oh wait, TV money doesn't even exist and you have to sell to buy, don't forget that one. Oh yes, Agent fees and the entire contract of the player need to be accounted for with a player purchase. Run that one by the Glazers eh? Net spend -£45m. Hires an inept manager who can't keep a job in League 1 with a proven history of being unable to manage talented creative players. Re-hires the most articulately retarded person the world has ever known to close transfer deals.

 

Do I go on ?

[gekkotime]

I don't know how representative of general opinion this forum is, but when I read threads like this I do worry about another post-Keegan meltdown, which won't do anyone any good.

 

This will no doubt fall on deaf ears, but can I point out two things -

 

Having an aim of finishing in the top ten means that 10th place is the minimum standard. It doesn't mean that you don't care whether you finish higher.

 

Prioritising the League against the Cups is what every Premiership club and most Championship clubs do. The only difference is that the club acknowledged it when asked a direct question in a fans forum.

 

We already know what Ashley's strategy is, because it was made clear at the start. He won't pay over the odds for established players - he'll go for young players who can be developed or players at the end of their contracts. The club itself will not run at a loss.

 

It's a long-term strategy. I'm not sure how well it will work, but unless you're prepared to pay huge amounts of money, there's no quick way of getting beyond the point we're at at this moment. The boom and bust Freddie Shepherd way is not the better alternative.

 

 

Not sure most fans are unhappy with our scouting at present or our transfer philosophy, we were 3-4 signings away from fighting for the top 4 in my opinion without the big money signings.

 

The issue is there is now no transfer plan other then to sell for profit and the club in generally has no direction or actual ambition - this is shown clearly by the appointment and sticking with a sub standard manager and back room team.

 

In the most part we have a team of internationals yet a coaching setup sub League 1, we have no identity on the pitch and we are slowly loosing out identity off also.

 

Personally don't agree that its about returning to the boom and bust era of Shepard but atleast showing some controlled ambition on all fronts, starting with a new manager who can mould a team that actually knows what they are doing once they cross that line.

 

I don’t think the club lacks ambition, but they are cautious and pragmatic in their approach. In contrast, the fans of every football club are energised by dreams of glory, and what the club have said does cut against that. No-one dreams of finishing 10th.

 

The trouble with putting a dreamer like Fernandez or Ridsdale in charge is that it will eventually go belly-up, unless you’re something of a bottomless pit of money , like Abramovich.  So every club, bar the exceptional, has to have some kind of financial discipline.

 

The problem with Shepherd was that he spent all the club could possibly afford in terms of debt, we got a break and made the CL, but then there was nothing left to push on with. The second season we made the CL places, all we could buy was  Bowyer on a free. Then there was the inevitable slip backwards.

 

The aim has to be that if we get that bit of luck and make the top four in the future, we’re in a sufficiently healthy position financially that we can take advantage, and not come to a full stop. Youth development, hitherto neglected, is another part of being in a good financial state when opportunity arises.

 

So in the absence of a Mansour, I’m not yet convinced that Ashley’s general strategy is wrong. He’s made some poor decisions, the latest being Kinnear, but overall I’m prepared to give things a bit longer.

 

I wouldn’t say Pardew is sub-standard incidentally, but that’s another debate.

 

This is not a terribly wrong account of what's going on, it's just that you are mistaken when it comes to ambition and motivation, I believe.

 

Now, this is all speculation, but the way I see it, Ashely's main 'ambition' at this point in time is to recoup his investment, so the aim is to turn in a profit.

 

From a purely economic standpoint, the safest way to achieve that seems to be mid-table mediocrity. The biggest source of income for the club is media revenue (if I'm not mistaken, roughly 60% of turnover in the latest accounts), which is fairly evenly distributed among Premier League teams, and is only partially affected by the league position as long as the club stays in the league (more on this later). The second is match-day income, which of course may decline due to bad performance on the pitch, but even after years of under-performing and numerous scandals, a good audience still turns up at SJP every other week, and I'd be surprised if the average attendance would fall below, say, 45,000 in the near future. In short, NUFC has a rather loyal fan base which produces a hefty income that can be taken for granted. Third, commercial revenue may also be affected, but it's a rather small chunk of the pie overall.

So, with the TV money flowing in and people still turning up at SJP, revenues will continue to be relatively healthy.

 

From the expense side, the club is operating with a small squad on comparatively mediocre wages and turns in a profit on the transfer market, so it's on a rather shoestring budget. But it has a decent scouting network, and this allows it to be a selling club while not being in constant threat of relegation, so the TV money is not in danger. Whether this is sustainable on the longer term is debatable, but it seems to be working for now, and Ashely seems to believe in it.

 

Of course, better performance on the pitch may lead to higher revenues, but it would also mean higher costs and risks. And it's not only the one-time costs of buying a number of better players and assembling a bigger squad, but also the constant costs of maintaining that squad and its quality. Realistically, a solid top four spot is 100m+ of one-time investment away, and with the rising constant costs, the rising revenues may not even result in higher profits (we could probably get +40-50m/year provided we get into the CL every year). So, the expected return on investment for this scenario is pretty low (if it's positive at all), and going for it would involve huge risks (i.e. not getting into the CL). Not something you'd like to do if you're after your money.

There's still huge competition for 5-7th place, TV money is not substantially higher, and the EL doesn't bring decent money anyway, so it's just not worth it. In our current position, investing more heavily in the playing squad just doesn't seem to have the potential to improve the profitability of the club substantially. Moreover, focusing on cups would not generate substantially higher revenues, yet it would involve risks as to our league performance, where the TV money is.

 

Now, I'm not saying that this is right this way, but given Ashely's (presumed) motivation, it suits him perfectly. Of course, the performance of the team could be improved by bringing in a half-decent manager and having a more though-out transfer strategy (i.e. buying players to fit the system/team instead of buying every French bargain we can get our hands on -- of course having a system in the first place would help a lot) without spending more, but it has been proven from time to time that Mike Ashely is not very wise when it comes to either footballing or personnel decisions. And playing good football just quite simply isn’t the point for him. So, sadly, I do expect us to stay where we are as long as Ashely is in charge, and that's possibly one of the more positive takes on the near future given his well demonstrated capacity to fuck things up horribly.

[NG32]

Crack on.  It needs repated over an over again until it sinks in.

[HawK]

Do people realise he intentionally deflates incomes wherever possible to hawk his Sports Direct shite? Matchday revenue down by so much to reduce overall turnover to make us look like we need the TV money just to tick the club over, when in fact, every single other football club in the fucking country makes MONEY out of their advertising hoardings. We don't, we GIVE money to SD. He has zero fucking commercial ambition for this club, it is just a cash cow to inflate SD.

 

The man is a gambler, a well-publicized high-stakes high-risk gambling man, and there is no bigger risk to gamble on than a football club, and he won't let the club make it's own money and spend it let alone put a pound in himself. Spite and recompense for the much-forgotten about actions that caused him to write those tearful letters where he didn't feel safe taking his family to the game. He's punishing the club and the fans every single week and people just bend over, take it up the arse and say 'Thanks Mike, I'm good at Maths and I can see we aren't doing a Portsmouth!'

[NG32]

Preach it brother!

[Guest tollemache]

We obviously do lack ambition, but most of the rest of that post is basically fact. Main question I have is whether the recent lack of signings is just a blip or if it's a decision to not buy unless we might go down.

 

exactly this, although if the blip doesn't happen, that constitutes SOME ambition

[HawK]

We obviously do lack ambition, but most of the rest of that post is basically fact. Main question I have is whether the recent lack of signings is just a blip or if it's a decision to not buy unless we might go down.

 

exactly this, although if the blip doesn't happen, that constitutes SOME ambition

 

A club with ambition maximises its revenues and re-invests in its team. Disagree?

[Dave]

One of the most cynical things about his tenure is the placing of temporary Sports Direct advertising over empty seats adjacent to away fans that don't take their full allocation. So that he benefits if we concede a goal.

[gekkotime]

Do people realise he intentionally deflates incomes wherever possible to hawk his Sports Direct shite? Matchday revenue down by so much to reduce overall turnover to make us look like we need the TV money just to tick the club over, when in fact, every single other football club in the fucking country makes MONEY out of their advertising hoardings. We don't, we GIVE money to SD. He has zero fucking commercial ambition for this club, it is just a cash cow to inflate SD.

 

The man is a gambler, a well-publicized high-stakes high-risk gambling man, and there is no bigger risk to gamble on than a football club, and he won't let the club make it's own money and spend it let alone put a pound in himself. Spite and recompense for the much-forgotten about actions that caused him to write those tearful letters where he didn't feel safe taking his family to the game. He's punishing the club and the fans every single week and people just bend over, take it up the arse and say 'Thanks Mike, I'm good at Maths and I can see we aren't doing a Portsmouth!'

 

Hoarding SD adverts all over SJP may piss a lot of people off, but -- again, from a purely economic standpoint -- it's a fairly zero-sum trade-off for him. While SD gets 'free' advertising which is worth a couple of millions, the club he owns gives up the same value in commercial revenues which it would get if it put up paid ads on those places. Given that he's not reinvesting a penny the club makes, it wouldn't really make a difference if another company would pay for advertising in SJP and SD would spend the same amount of ad money elsewhere. He could just take that money out of the club. That would still piss a lot of people off, although probably not as many and not as much as the SD adverts.

[Guest tollemache]

We obviously do lack ambition, but most of the rest of that post is basically fact. Main question I have is whether the recent lack of signings is just a blip or if it's a decision to not buy unless we might go down.

 

exactly this, although if the blip doesn't happen, that constitutes SOME ambition

 

A club with ambition maximises its revenues and re-invests in its team. Disagree?

 

Agree about maximising revenues, and for the record I think the Sports Direct branding is unequivocally shit. As for re-investing in the team, if the quality of the team increases year on year I don't mind if we make a profit on transfers - in fact I think it's a good thing. That's why this summer is a biggie for me - if we don't buy 2 or 3 quality players, for the first time since promotion our team at the start of one season will be noticeably weaker than the one that started the season before. I honestly don't think that'll happen a) because it'd represent a change of approach for no obvious reason and b) because we clearly need that investment to avoid being sucked into the melee further down the league, so even if you suspect Ashley of only wanting to stand still and avoid Europe, you'd still expect him to spend. So I really, really think we'll bring in some serious reinforcements.

 

Realistically, a solid top four spot is 100m+ of one-time investment away

 

I think that's an underestimation - I'd say it's more like... a one-off shot at a top 4 spot is about a £100m investment away. A sustained, serious effort to set up shop in the top 4 means assembling and maintaining a squad better than Spurs, Liverpool or Arsenal, which is a lot harder than just dropping £100m (or probably more) one summer.

[NG32]

Do people realise he intentionally deflates incomes wherever possible to hawk his Sports Direct s****? Matchday revenue down by so much to reduce overall turnover to make us look like we need the TV money just to tick the club over, when in fact, every single other football club in the f***ing country makes MONEY out of their advertising hoardings. We don't, we GIVE money to SD. He has zero f***ing commercial ambition for this club, it is just a cash cow to inflate SD.

 

The man is a gambler, a well-publicized high-stakes high-risk gambling man, and there is no bigger risk to gamble on than a football club, and he won't let the club make it's own money and spend it let alone put a pound in himself. Spite and recompense for the much-forgotten about actions that caused him to write those tearful letters where he didn't feel safe taking his family to the game. He's punishing the club and the fans every single week and people just bend over, take it up the arse and say 'Thanks Mike, I'm good at Maths and I can see we aren't doing a Portsmouth!'

 

Hoarding SD adverts all over SJP may p*ss a lot of people off, but -- again, from a purely economic standpoint -- it's a fairly zero-sum trade-off for him. While SD gets 'free' advertising which is worth a couple of millions, the club he owns gives up the same value in commercial revenues which it would get if it put up paid ads on those places. Given that he's not reinvesting a penny the club makes, it wouldn't really make a difference if another company would pay for advertising in SJP and SD would spend the same amount of ad money elsewhere. He could just take that money out of the club. That would still p*ss a lot of people off, although probably not as many and not as much as the SD adverts.

 

Makes a big difference when we are told we cant compete with Norwich, Southampton, Everton Swansea and whoever else is outside that top, when that commercial revenue could potentially give us the edge...it has in the past. 

[Cronky]

I don't know how representative of general opinion this forum is, but when I read threads like this I do worry about another post-Keegan meltdown, which won't do anyone any good.

 

This will no doubt fall on deaf ears, but can I point out two things -

 

Having an aim of finishing in the top ten means that 10th place is the minimum standard. It doesn't mean that you don't care whether you finish higher.

 

Prioritising the League against the Cups is what every Premiership club and most Championship clubs do. The only difference is that the club acknowledged it when asked a direct question in a fans forum.

 

We already know what Ashley's strategy is, because it was made clear at the start. He won't pay over the odds for established players - he'll go for young players who can be developed or players at the end of their contracts. The club itself will not run at a loss.

 

It's a long-term strategy. I'm not sure how well it will work, but unless you're prepared to pay huge amounts of money, there's no quick way of getting beyond the point we're at at this moment. The boom and bust Freddie Shepherd way is not the better alternative.

 

 

Not sure most fans are unhappy with our scouting at present or our transfer philosophy, we were 3-4 signings away from fighting for the top 4 in my opinion without the big money signings.

 

The issue is there is now no transfer plan other then to sell for profit and the club in generally has no direction or actual ambition - this is shown clearly by the appointment and sticking with a sub standard manager and back room team.

 

In the most part we have a team of internationals yet a coaching setup sub League 1, we have no identity on the pitch and we are slowly loosing out identity off also.

 

Personally don't agree that its about returning to the boom and bust era of Shepard but atleast showing some controlled ambition on all fronts, starting with a new manager who can mould a team that actually knows what they are doing once they cross that line.

 

I don’t think the club lacks ambition, but they are cautious and pragmatic in their approach. In contrast, the fans of every football club are energised by dreams of glory, and what the club have said does cut against that. No-one dreams of finishing 10th.

 

The trouble with putting a dreamer like Fernandez or Ridsdale in charge is that it will eventually go belly-up, unless you’re something of a bottomless pit of money , like Abramovich.  So every club, bar the exceptional, has to have some kind of financial discipline.

 

The problem with Shepherd was that he spent all the club could possibly afford in terms of debt, we got a break and made the CL, but then there was nothing left to push on with. The second season we made the CL places, all we could buy was  Bowyer on a free. Then there was the inevitable slip backwards.

 

The aim has to be that if we get that bit of luck and make the top four in the future, we’re in a sufficiently healthy position financially that we can take advantage, and not come to a full stop. Youth development, hitherto neglected, is another part of being in a good financial state when opportunity arises.

 

So in the absence of a Mansour, I’m not yet convinced that Ashley’s general strategy is wrong. He’s made some poor decisions, the latest being Kinnear, but overall I’m prepared to give things a bit longer.

 

I wouldn’t say Pardew is sub-standard incidentally, but that’s another debate.

 

This is not a terribly wrong account of what's going on, it's just that you are mistaken when it comes to ambition and motivation, I believe.

 

Now, this is all speculation, but the way I see it, Ashely's main 'ambition' at this point in time is to recoup his investment, so the aim is to turn in a profit.

 

From a purely economic standpoint, the safest way to achieve that seems to be mid-table mediocrity. The biggest source of income for the club is media revenue (if I'm not mistaken, roughly 60% of turnover in the latest accounts), which is fairly evenly distributed among Premier League teams, and is only partially affected by the league position as long as the club stays in the league (more on this later). The second is match-day income, which of course may decline due to bad performance on the pitch, but even after years of under-performing and numerous scandals, a good audience still turns up at SJP every other week, and I'd be surprised if the average attendance would fall below, say, 45,000 in the near future. In short, NUFC has a rather loyal fan base which produces a hefty income that can be taken for granted. Third, commercial revenue may also be affected, but it's a rather small chunk of the pie overall.

So, with the TV money flowing in and people still turning up at SJP, revenues will continue to be relatively healthy.

 

From the expense side, the club is operating with a small squad on comparatively mediocre wages and turns in a profit on the transfer market, so it's on a rather shoestring budget. But it has a decent scouting network, and this allows it to be a selling club while not being in constant threat of relegation, so the TV money is not in danger. Whether this is sustainable on the longer term is debatable, but it seems to be working for now, and Ashely seems to believe in it.

 

Of course, better performance on the pitch may lead to higher revenues, but it would also mean higher costs and risks. And it's not only the one-time costs of buying a number of better players and assembling a bigger squad, but also the constant costs of maintaining that squad and its quality. Realistically, a solid top four spot is 100m+ of one-time investment away, and with the rising constant costs, the rising revenues may not even result in higher profits (we could probably get +40-50m/year provided we get into the CL every year). So, the expected return on investment for this scenario is pretty low (if it's positive at all), and going for it would involve huge risks (i.e. not getting into the CL). Not something you'd like to do if you're after your money.

There's still huge competition for 5-7th place, TV money is not substantially higher, and the EL doesn't bring decent money anyway, so it's just not worth it. In our current position, investing more heavily in the playing squad just doesn't seem to have the potential to improve the profitability of the club substantially. Moreover, focusing on cups would not generate substantially higher revenues, yet it would involve risks as to our league performance, where the TV money is.

 

Now, I'm not saying that this is right this way, but given Ashely's (presumed) motivation, it suits him perfectly. Of course, the performance of the team could be improved by bringing in a half-decent manager and having a more though-out transfer strategy (i.e. buying players to fit the system/team instead of buying every French bargain we can get our hands on -- of course having a system in the first place would help a lot) without spending more, but it has been proven from time to time that Mike Ashely is not very wise when it comes to either footballing or personnel decisions. And playing good football just quite simply isn’t the point for him. So, sadly, I do expect us to stay where we are as long as Ashely is in charge, and that's possibly one of the more positive takes on the near future given his well demonstrated capacity to fuck things up horribly.

 

Thank you for that post, which addresses the points that I was making, even if we don't entirely agree.

 

When I said that I didn't think the club lacked ambition, I meant it in the sense that they're not indifferent to the idea of success, and would like the team to thrive. What others mean by the word strikes me as rather different ie spending more money on players. And achieving success that way is not as simple as all that, as your post acknowledges at various points, I think.

 

Where I think we differ is in our assessment of Ashley's motivation, which I think is more complex and more erratic than is usually stated. I don't think he bought the club purely as a business proposition. I think it was a poorly thought-out impulse buy, by a genuine sports fan. He'd got all that cash from selling part of his business, and the sudden opportunity to buy a major Premiership club was too much to resist. Since then, he's stumbled along, making as many bad decisions as good ones, as the realities of running a club hit home.

 

I certainly think he's fallen out of love with the task. He's had to put in a lot of money which he's unlikely to recoup, and he's determined not to lose any more. I also think a certain mentality has crept in, along the lines of I'm going to be unpopular no matter what I do, so I may as well please myself, as with the appointment of Joe Kinnear and the Sports Direct advertising.

 

But I baulk at the idea that where we happen to be at this precise moment is where he was planning to be all along, and where we're necessarily going to stay. Though obviously we need a bit of luck as well as good management to progress.

 

Whether Pardew is good enough, I'm still not sure tbh.

[NG32]

Alan Pardew, Pre Villa press conference

 

http://screendwellers.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/TheyLive1041111.jpg

 

It really is like They Live, people just dont see it.  :lol:

[Wullie]

Some of Newcastle Online's worst ever posts over the last three pages. Neesy celebrates as he slips out of the top ten.

[LRD]

Mike Ashley a 'genuine sports fan'. All he does is pissing on us. Lying to the fans and mistreating club legends like Keegan and Shearer. Plastering SD adverts all over the stadium at no cost. Renaming the stadium. Appointing Joe Kinnear, twice. Selling a key player while we could still challenge for Europe. Signing only Anita that summer when we should try pushing on from the previous season. No interest in the cups cos the money is not there.

 

Genuine sports fan. A real football man would seek to rectify his mistakes, not compound them.

[Guest neesy111]

Some of Newcastle Online's worst ever posts over the last three pages. Neesy celebrates as he slips out of the top ten.

 

Charming.

[LRD]

Like a battered wife seeking to justify why her husband hits her when all the bruises and broken bones tell a clear story.

[PineBarrens]

I'm sure Sir John Hall is on record as stating that Mike Ashley told him the reason he wanted to buy NUFC was to assist in promoting Sports Direct overseas. It'll be a beautiful day when he leaves this club.

[Wullie]

Some of Newcastle Online's worst ever posts over the last three pages. Neesy celebrates as he slips out of the top ten.

 

Charming.

 

Sorry, easy target.

[Dave]

Mike Ashley a 'genuine sports fan'. All he does is pissing on us. Lying to the fans and mistreating club legends like Keegan and Shearer. Plastering SD adverts all over the stadium at no cost. Renaming the stadium. Appointing Joe Kinnear, twice. Selling a key player while we could still challenge for Europe. Signing only Anita that summer when we should try pushing on from the previous season. No interest in the cups cos the money is not there.

 

Genuine sports fan. A real football man would seek to rectify his mistakes, not compound them.

 

None of that matters because the performance on the pitch has been great. I mean, it's not like we were relegated or owt.

[HawK]

I've seen that some people still can't understand, so I've drawn a diagram of just one aspect that is COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE PRACTICE for an OWNER of a football club to do.

 

 

http://i.imgur.com/8Y7MdqQ.jpg

 

 

Oh he's some more cold hard home truths.

 

The hearing declared that the club had admitted to 'repeatedly and intentionally misleading the press, public and the fans of Newcastle United', while the evidence given by owner Mike Ashley and his fellow executives over the course of the two-week hearing was described at one point in the verdict as 'profoundly unsatisfactory'.

 

- http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-1217791/Kevin-Keegan-gets-revenge-Newcastle-legend-wins-2m-blows-lid-secrets-lies-clubs-transfer-dealings.html#ixzz2u5n6F27C

 

[Dave]

[Disco]

Brilliant

[LRD]

You did that? Brilliant.

 

The Keegan case also showed us he was treating the fans with utter contempt, way before the first fan protest. That was like a season into his ownership.

 

How could the actual fans not see that ffs.

[Guest neesy111]

I've seen that some people still can't understand, so I've drawn a diagram of just one aspect that is COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE PRACTICE for an OWNER of a football club to do.

 

 

http://i.imgur.com/8Y7MdqQ.jpg

 

 

Oh he's some more cold hard home truths.

 

The hearing declared that the club had admitted to 'repeatedly and intentionally misleading the press, public and the fans of Newcastle United', while the evidence given by owner Mike Ashley and his fellow executives over the course of the two-week hearing was described at one point in the verdict as 'profoundly unsatisfactory'.

 

- http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-1217791/Kevin-Keegan-gets-revenge-Newcastle-legend-wins-2m-blows-lid-secrets-lies-clubs-transfer-dealings.html#ixzz2u5n6F27C