Jump to content

Mike Ashley


Christmas Tree

Recommended Posts

Said it before, will say it again, Llambias should be gagged and banned from talking to the media by Ashley.

He does nowt but cause shit storms and bad feeling between the board and the fans.

 

Eh, what's he said that's got you riled up this time?

Link to post
Share on other sites

Hatem Ben Arfa (£2m from Marseille) that's daylight robbery :lol:

 

2 million pounds that would buy you around 3 and a half million greggs pasties. Now thats money better spent ;)

 

ok lets trade obertan with 1.5x of that amount shall we....

 

Havent given up on Obertan yet.. hes got all the attributes to be a very good footballer .. just lacks mentally .. i havfe faith that carver and pardew will have him fireing next season.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Guest Wally_McFool

Said it before, will say it again, Llambias should be gagged and banned from talking to the media by Ashley.

He does nowt but cause shit storms and bad feeling between the board and the fans.

 

Eh, what's he said that's got you riled up this time?

 

Nowt new from the above article but he's said plenty of things in the past that has pissed off  the fans and I'll remind you about this next time he does it. (when not if!) :D

 

 

Link to post
Share on other sites

Said it before, will say it again, Llambias should be gagged and banned from talking to the media by Ashley.

He does nowt but cause shit storms and bad feeling between the board and the fans.

 

Eh, what's he said that's got you riled up this time?

 

Nowt new from the above article but he's said plenty of things in the past that has pissed off  the fans and I'll remind you about this next time he does it. (when not if!) :D

 

 

 

Most of what Dekka has said recently, through the programme or press, has been pretty spot on.

If anything he's maybe a touch too straight and tells it as it is without dressing anything up to court popularity.

After the arsehole behaviour at Darlo pre season he tore straight into the culprits and acted immediately despite already being unpopular and credit to him for that. 

Chairmen of another club in the area have consistently turned a blind eye to their fans (and players) loutish behaviour rather than risk upsetting anybody.

Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm open-minded so one way i've looked at thing is that fter appointing Keegan in early 2008, the financial and economic climate became very harsh and either as a result of this or through a realisation of the quantity of money required to put that squad right (and also the loss of money of getting rid of players) there was an upheaval and change of strategy some time in early 2008, a realisation that it couldnt be done or a decision not to bother trying. For whatever reason, i think they found themselves in a hole and they changed everything. Keegan wanted to build on the team with big money signings (recognising what we all recognised that THAT squad / team needed at least 50m spending on it) and clashed with the board who were in the middle of realising all their assumptions about the business they bought were wrong. The fall out and subsequent treatment of Keegan i believe taught Ashley a massive lesson, that the fervour and passion at a football club can mean a player or manager has more power than the owner himself. Must have been an unusual feeling for him. The fact that he eventually appointed Shearer suggesting either one last roll of the dice or a machiavellian move to discredit a powerful potential enemy?  I still cant work out whether he didnt care if we were relegated or not or actively planned it. Appointing Shearer suggests they wanted to avoid it but looked at in retrospect (and given the seemingly intelligent way the squad has been assembled financially this season) it seems they couldnt have done much more to ensure relegation occured. (Then again why panic buy Nolan in January when Barton got injured?)

 

The backdop to his whole regime has been the lying, the horrible defacing of the stadium, the idiocy of giving a job to the odious dwarf Wise, the treatment of Keegan, the long running episode regarding selling the club, Hughton in, Hughton out, Pardew in, Carroll out, unknown (sic) and mercenary frogs in, backbone and embodiment of the club (Nolan / Barton) out, no proper striker in. At the time every single one of those actions looked stupid and in the treatment of a club hero downright despicable.

 

However, once you've dealt with the Keegan issue, the list of things that have pissed people off is beginning to unravel a bit. The Carroll deal looks like good business for now, replacing the inexperienced Hughton with Pardew also looks as though it has worked, not rushing to spend 11m on Ruiz looks sensible given the relative goal scoring records of Best and Ba, Cabaye is better than Nolan, Obertan & Marveaux are definitely quicker than Barton if nowt else, Santon may be a replacement for Enrique. 

 

He's brutal (Keegan), ruthless (Shearer), calculated (Hughton), manipulative (his first season), opportunistic (Carroll) and exploitative (SD Branding) but i think ultimately (after wavering around not knowing which way to go) they have settled on a strategy. For those who are more negatively minded than this post appears to be, my question is 'what do you think that strategy is?'. After reading 1000s of negative words about Ashley i realised something important: there were numerous negative 'narratives' about Ashley that tried to encapsulate in a sentence his evil plan. 'Asset stripping' was an early classic, 'Profiteering', 'using NUFC as an advertising vehicle for SD', 'Selling club', 'Yo-yo club', 'West Brom model', 'buy cheap, sell high', 'buy based on re-sale value' etc some of them often expressed by the same person whilst being inconsistent with each other or actual events. Which of the Barton, Nolan or Enrique deals did we make money on? Where does the lack of profit on these deals fit into the narrative, which narrative? He just wants to reduce the wage bill? How come its gone up then?

 

The fact remains that there has been little consistency to Ashley's regime and much brutality that positioning anything postive that he has done as anything other than luck can set you apart as blinded and foolish. The season isnt old enough and our current trajectory is still unsure enough to mean i wont try and say anything for certain. However, the one strategic narrative that does make sense, the one Sir John Hall says Ashley expressed when he bought the club does give me some reason to be postive. If he wants to market SD to markets outside the UK and use the profile of the premiership to help drive the global growth of SD then the most effective way to do that is through having a successful NUFC that doesnt cost the world to run, good enough to threaten the top of the table and too good to be relegated, all within a wage bill of around 60 to 80m depending on financial performance (based on a target income of 100 - 120m per year). To do all that though, SJP is going to look like the premiership equivalent of Poundstretchers. I've heard this point of view discredited as 'an insanely expensive way or promoting SD' but of the 280m invested, he still has 140m of it in the asset and presumably the rest can be recuperated eventually. If he gets the price he paid back when he sells it and the debts to him are paid off then eventually its not an insanely expensive advertising campaign. Just an ugly one.

 

I'm not going to pretend i wasnt worried and pissed of on Sep 2nd but one thing i wont do is keep ascribing things that have gone well for us all down to luck. At some point if things continue to go well, somebody has to take some credit. Likewise if it all goes pear-shaped.  He hasnt proved his doubters wrong yet but the way we have started this season has given them food for thought. One thing the doubters are not wrong about is that this club has more potential than Ashley is currently aiming for. Our financial performance is not that great, matchday revenues and commercial revenues have massivley dropped since he took over, there is at least 20 to 30m of revenue left on the table. If he starts to build these revenue lines, adds more quality to the squad and doesnt sell our best players then am sure more people will feel more postive. Unfortunately, as Sean Custis said yesterday, as soon as things start going well he manages to do something to fuck it up. Lets hope that inevitable moment is a while off for now.

 

Still holds up 8 months later

Link to post
Share on other sites

Guest rosstoon

I think a true test will be in the summer. If he builds on our team and does not risk a fall down in the league by selling our top assetts than i think he has turned the corner. I just hope we can build with a few signings and remove the dead wood.  Then i think it wuill be time to back him

Link to post
Share on other sites

I think a true test will be in the summer. If he builds on our team and does not risk a fall down in the league by selling our top assetts than i think he has turned the corner. I just hope we can build with a few signings and remove the dead wood.  Then i think it wuill be time to back him

reaching the champs league could be the game changer here. should we get there i'd hope no-one would leave (except the dead wood,and there's little of that), and if anyone did it would have to be for a carrollesque type stupid fee of at least double the players actual worth.
Link to post
Share on other sites

I think a true test will be in the summer. If he builds on our team and does not risk a fall down in the league by selling our top assetts than i think he has turned the corner. I just hope we can build with a few signings and remove the dead wood.  Then i think it wuill be time to back him

 

People were saying this a year ago tbf and the team is currently a million miles further forward than then. We only need a few players to complete the team and it sounds like they're well on their way to being signed.

Link to post
Share on other sites

I think a true test will be in the summer. If he builds on our team and does not risk a fall down in the league by selling our top assetts than i think he has turned the corner. I just hope we can build with a few signings and remove the dead wood.  Then i think it wuill be time to back him

 

Players are going to leave, it's an inevitability in modern football. What's more important is how we as a club are addressing this inevitability and shaping our plans for continued progress.

Got it from a good source that when Graham Carr was questioned about the possibility of a certain player leaving he replied that he didn't know, but what he did know was that in the case of that happening he already has a replacement lined up who he thinks is even better.

Link to post
Share on other sites

I think a true test will be in the summer. If he builds on our team and does not risk a fall down in the league by selling our top assetts than i think he has turned the corner. I just hope we can build with a few signings and remove the dead wood.  Then i think it wuill be time to back him

 

Players are going to leave, it's an inevitability in modern football. What's more important is how we as a club are addressing this inevitability and shaping our plans for continued progress.

Got it from a good source that when Graham Carr was questioned about the possibility of a certain player leaving he replied that he didn't know, but what he did know was that in the case of that happening he already has a replacement lined up who he thinks is even better.

if thats true we ought to be activly looking at shifting those players out (if the replacement is better) ?
Link to post
Share on other sites

I think a true test will be in the summer. If he builds on our team and does not risk a fall down in the league by selling our top assetts than i think he has turned the corner. I just hope we can build with a few signings and remove the dead wood.  Then i think it wuill be time to back him

 

Players are going to leave, it's an inevitability in modern football. What's more important is how we as a club are addressing this inevitability and shaping our plans for continued progress.

Got it from a good source that when Graham Carr was questioned about the possibility of a certain player leaving he replied that he didn't know, but what he did know was that in the case of that happening he already has a replacement lined up who he thinks is even better.

if thats true we ought to be activly looking at shifting those players out (if the replacement is better) ?

 

In an ideal world, yes. But if the player isn't one of our weaker/priority positions then I wouldn't have thought it would work quite as simply as that.

Link to post
Share on other sites

I think a true test will be in the summer. If he builds on our team and does not risk a fall down in the league by selling our top assetts than i think he has turned the corner. I just hope we can build with a few signings and remove the dead wood.  Then i think it wuill be time to back him

 

People were saying this a year ago tbf and the team is currently a million miles further forward than then. We only need a few players to complete the team and it sounds like they're well on their way to being signed.

 

Spot on N-o-N, we've been constantly improving the squad since Jan 10, letting the players who aren't offering value-for-money leave (or not renewing their contracts) and bringing in better players.

 

I think the focus this summer will be on the youth/reserve setup and only a couple of first team ready players in/out.

Link to post
Share on other sites

I think a true test will be in the summer. If he builds on our team and does not risk a fall down in the league by selling our top assetts than i think he has turned the corner. I just hope we can build with a few signings and remove the dead wood.  Then i think it wuill be time to back him

 

Players are going to leave, it's an inevitability in modern football. What's more important is how we as a club are addressing this inevitability and shaping our plans for continued progress.

Got it from a good source that when Graham Carr was questioned about the possibility of a certain player leaving he replied that he didn't know, but what he did know was that in the case of that happening he already has a replacement lined up who he thinks is even better.

if thats true we ought to be activly looking at shifting those players out (if the replacement is better) ?

 

Who knows we may?

But equally there's an argument for keeping a good player who's settled as the "better" replacement may take time to settle.

The main point is that under the present management structure we do have a plan in place for recruitment thereby eliminating, to a degree, the chance element and negative impact of a key player departing.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Hope he's not watching this Cardiff nonsense with interest like.

 

?

 

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tomchiversscience/100157019/cardiff-citys-bluebirds-to-go-red-how-british-football-decided-to-desecrate-its-cathedrals-for-cash/

 

The Welsh club has been bought by a Malaysian businessman, and as part of their efforts to rebrand the club, they are discussing changing the club's 104-year-old blue kit to red, and the badge from a bluebird to a red dragon. The idea, apparently, is to increase marketing revenues in Asia.

 

 

Link to post
Share on other sites

How do you think, like a sack of shit :lol:

 

Also discussions about changing name of club to "Cardiff Red Dragons" or some such nonsense.  Just re-raised the spectre of the whole "He wouldn't... Would he?" everytime someone mentions taking to the field in red and blue as Sports-Direct FC after the latest attempt to splash his comapny on everything.

Link to post
Share on other sites

How do you think, like a sack of s*** :lol:

 

Also discussions about changing name of club to "Cardiff Red Dragons" or some such nonsense.  Just re-raised the spectre of the whole "He wouldn't... Would he?" everytime someone mentions taking to the field in red and blue as Sports-Direct FC after the latest attempt to splash his comapny on everything.

 

Alreet. Don't bite me heed off!

 

But wow :kasper:

 

 

Link to post
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...