Mike Ashley

[Colocho]

For a couple of years?

 

If that's the way they want to run the club, they aren't just going to do it for a couple of years...

[TRon]

For a couple of years?

 

If that's the way they want to run the club, they aren't just going to do it for a couple of years...

 

What I meant by that was unless the team gets good enough to be challenging for CL football there'll always be the chance that the CL clubs will be able to come in and sign our Tiotes and Cabayes. If we can get top dollar for any of our players though we should be able to buy quality replacements similar to what has happened at Spurs, then hopefully we'll be in a strong enough position down the line to be able to rebuff those offers due to our own success.

[BlueStar]

I think "buying players with a resale value" isn't necessarily what people make it out to be. Look at a club like Tottenham. It's been Daniel Levy's way of doing things for many years now, and they've had some steady progression since they started doing it (i.e. after Bentley, Bent etc.) . In their case - and hopefully in ours - buying players with a resale value is more about not paying premium price than trying make an actual profit.

 

Spurs have spent an absolute shit-ton of money getting to where they are in terms of their recent good spell, so I'm not sure there's much of a comparison to be made.  Whether you look at it over the last 5 years or the last 8 years they're fourth in the league of big spenders in terms of net outlay, and if it hadn't been for Liverpool's recent spending spree I'd imagine they'd be third, only behind Man City and Chelsea in the spunking stakes.

 

There seems to be an impression that they've become top four contenders through frugal dealing in the transfer market and a club like us could learn something from them, when really I don't see how we can learn anything about how to run an Ashley model club from Spurs.

[thomas]

If they have resale value it means they're decent to good already and will improve both themselves and the team over time.  Surely that's preferable to shit and/or past it?

 

 

 

[bowlingcrofty]

Great post Chez - hope you don't mind but have stolen it for our website. Think it hits the nail on the head of how I personally feel.

[ChezGiven]

No worries mate, you might want to edit that opening sentence though.

[bowlingcrofty]

No worries mate, you might want to edit that opening sentence though.

 

Nah it's attributed to you, don't worry

[Christmas Tree]

No worries mate, you might want to edit that opening sentence though.

 

Posted this anywhere else? 

[Sifu]

A well thought out post Chez. Good balance.

[Mr Logic]

Nice to read a post like that Chez, offering a different and considered perspective so different to the usual histrionics.

[Stu]

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.

 

[AlanSkÃrare]

I think "buying players with a resale value" isn't necessarily what people make it out to be. Look at a club like Tottenham. It's been Daniel Levy's way of doing things for many years now, and they've had some steady progression since they started doing it (i.e. after Bentley, Bent etc.) . In their case - and hopefully in ours - buying players with a resale value is more about not paying premium price than trying make an actual profit.

 

Spurs have spent an absolute s***-ton of money getting to where they are in terms of their recent good spell, so I'm not sure there's much of a comparison to be made.  Whether you look at it over the last 5 years or the last 8 years they're fourth in the league of big spenders in terms of net outlay, and if it hadn't been for Liverpool's recent spending spree I'd imagine they'd be third, only behind Man City and Chelsea in the spunking stakes.

 

There seems to be an impression that they've become top four contenders through frugal dealing in the transfer market and a club like us could learn something from them, when really I don't see how we can learn anything about how to run an Ashley model club from Spurs.

 

I don't think my comparison is down to that aspect, it's a fact that they've spent themselves to death. Should be nothed that they brought in a fair amount from Carrick and Berbatov as well, but of course, Joe Lewis and his money is another thing.

 

Anyway, that wasn't my point as I don't think we'll reach fourth with this policy. They've said in recent years that they won't buy players without any resale value, but they're not looking to move every good player on as soon as a decent bid comes in. Just hope that's the case here as well.

[Guest icemanblue]

Here, Chez, can I gobble you off, please?

[ChezGiven]

Here, Chez, can I gobble you off, please?

As long as you put it up on your blog, aye no worries.

[Guest icemanblue]

[cp40]

I drove through walker today and saw the west stand in full view- why not advertise on there? all the chavs can see it.

 

I was also struck by the thought that, if Ashley is using the stadium as a vehicle to advertise- then maybe he will do well if we got in the champions league, and just maybe that is his plan.  then I woke up and went back to work.

[Stu]

[Ikon]

[OzzieMandias]

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.

 

Excellent post. Good to see you active around here again.

 

 

[quayside]

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 p*ssed 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 p*ssed 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 f*** it up. Lets hope that inevitable moment is a while off for now.

 

What a fantastic post that is 

[Dave]

Agreed. It'll take much more than six games to convince me he knows what the fuck he's playing at mind.

[TheGuv]

No worries mate, you might want to edit that opening sentence though.

 

Posted this anywhere else? 

 

Saw this was re posted on Toontastic and he was slated for posting it on here

 

He had dumbed it down for us 

[Dave]

I liked the comment on Shiteseats apparently correcting where he's 'from'.

[TheGuv]

I liked the comment on Shiteseats apparently correcting where he's 'from'.

 

Aye

[Cronky]

Some good points, Chez, but I'd take issue on a couple.

 

Unless you were being ironic, I can't see how you can suggest that Ashley either wanted the club relegated, or didn't care whether or not we went down. Relegation is always going to be costly in so many ways, and could have been a disaster if we hadn't got back up first time. It was the culmination of the terrible double decision a) to appoint Keegan and b) to put him in a DOF structure. Chaos followed, and Ashley completely lost control of the situation.

 

Secondly, you quote Sean Custis, and this idea that 'another' fuck-up is probably just around the corner, given Ashley's record. In practice, the major fuck-up over Keegan and Wise dwarfs anything else you could label as a mistake, and that style of mistake won't be repeated. As you half-acknowledge yourself, a number of the decisions which have subsequently been labelled by many as fuck-ups (The Carroll sale, the Hughton sacking, Pardew etc) now don't look so bad after all.

 

Ashley's a difficult bloke to read. He's had an unorthodox business career, and he's very much his own man now when it comes to running the club. It's interesting that he made a lot of money in business by taking old brands that had supposedly run out of steam (Slazenger, Lonsdale etc) and re-invigorated them. A lot of the players we've bought (eg Ben Arfa, Marveaux, Santon) have had careers which have hit the buffers after a promising beginning, or have been seen as high injury risks (Ba, Gosling) He seems to like to take a punt on players who, for one reason or another, may be under-rated by general opinion in the game, but whose potential can still be tapped. He likes to go against the grain. He's got to grips with the job more now and seems more confident, and I'm optimistic about where we're going.