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Mike Ashley (former owner) (still alive)


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Honestly, Ashley is the perfect fit for a club like Reading.  They don’t have a history to speak of (unlike Newcastle, Coventry, Derby), aren’t from a big football area (the town is one of the blandest I’ve ever been to), and his mismanagement is unlikely to attract any media attention.  They’re assuming that he’ll have them lower mid-table like we were - which would of course be epoch-making at a club like Reading.  He won’t though; he would actually need to invest in the club to get them to that point, which he didn’t need to for us to be there.  

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4 hours ago, Orphanage said:

Whenever i see this thread bumped my heart skips a beat in the hope that the bastards dead

Likewise.  I feel like how one of those trophy wives who marry 90-year-old billionaires must feel - the prospect of him keeling over is thrilling, no matter how much of a bad person it makes me

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10 hours ago, Chris_R said:

I've said before and stand by that Ashley won't make every team worse.

 

He could take a team heading down from L1 and get them to the Championship easily just by throwing a bit of spare change at them, and he'd probably be willing to do that because he wants what's best for Mike Ashley and that would clearly tie in with keeping them up which could be done for what amounts to pocket change for him. The problem is he cannot improve a club the size of ours or indeed any established PL side, so he again does what's best for Mike Ashley and just drains all the money into his account whilst using us as an advertising hoarding. That won't work with Reading because in L1 there's nobody to advertise to.

 

I despise him as much as anyone for what he did to us, but I think this notion that he'll automatically be terrible for whoever he owns is possibly a bit misconstrued/hopeful. He can basically at will turn any team he takes over into a lower PL / upper Championship side, you've just got to factor in that team's starting point to decide if that's a good thing or not. For some it'll be a dream and they'd rightly let him rename the stadium and plaster his tat all over the place if he provided that for them.

 

If he ever took over a side like Everton or Villa I'd not stop lauging for a week mind.

He could barely keep a club the size of Newcastle in the PL (in fact, he failed twice) where due to our name and fan base he could attract players and managers of much higher calibre than he could at a Reading or Derby. How we weren't relegated under Bruce, I'll never know tbh, and there certainly won't be an ASM and Wilson at Reading papering over the huge cracks like he could have here. 

He failed at every single part of being an owner of a football club, he's a fucking idiot and there is absolutely no chance he makes a League 1 club into a PL side. 

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I was for a long while of the opinion his small time tactics may satisfy other clubs that might just want to be clear of relegation to League One. But the more time has gone on I'm sure he'll drag any club down a relative notch or two.

 

He hit the perfect sweet spot with us of a club that was self-sufficient enough that he could leave it festering and still bounce straight back to the PL if relegated. He's not getting anything like that in the Champo unless he properly invests. And why would he do that when his empire of tat isn't going to get anywhere near the level of free advertising that NUFC gave him? 

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Why the fuck are there so many newcastle fans saying he'll get them to a lower half Premier team

Will he fuck. He was handed a top 6 club up here and took us to a lower half team with a couple of relegation

No chance is he getting reading promoted 2 leagues

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2 hours ago, Nobody said:

there is absolutely no chance he makes a League 1 club into a PL side. 

 

That's not really what I was saying though.

 

I wasn't talking about him turning Reading into what we were, more turning them into an upper Championship club who might have a pop at promotion occasionally, maybe even successfully. They'd go down again, for all the reasons you stated, but he could get them into a position to occasionally challenge promotion in the Championship, I'm sure of that. And for Reading fans, right now that's a dream scenario.

 

Not every club's barometer of success or failure is the same. Suggesting Ashley would make Reading worse than they currently are is hubris and wishful thinking on our part, when he could sort out many of their problems with what is to him effectively pocket money.

 

We were nothing but a cash cow for him. Reading could never be that in their current state, so he won't be buying them as such.

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What evidence is there to say that he’d be a success there? I agree that success would be stabilising in the championship. There’s absolutely zero evidence that he can run a football club effectively. We were destroyed by him in most measurable ways. He’s not going to spend any money to improve their squad, he’s going to sell any of their best players and he’s going to look for the cheapest possible solutions without any footballing plan for how to make Reading a success. He will absolutely destroy them. They might think things are bad right now, let’s check in on them in two year’s time 

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10 minutes ago, gbandit said:

What evidence is there to say that he’d be a success there

Neither side of an argument can have any evidence about any future outcome of any topic without building a time machine. 

 

Everything is, by necessity, speculation.

 

 

Edited by Chris_R

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11 minutes ago, gbandit said:

What evidence is there to say that he’d be a success there? I agree that success would be stabilising in the championship. There’s absolutely zero evidence that he can run a football club effectively. We were destroyed by him in most measurable ways. He’s not going to spend any money to improve their squad, he’s going to sell any of their best players and he’s going to look for the cheapest possible solutions without any footballing plan for how to make Reading a success. He will absolutely destroy them. They might think things are bad right now, let’s check in on them in two year’s time 

Think he can stabilise them in the Champ.

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35 minutes ago, Chris_R said:

Neither side of an argument can have any evidence about any future outcome of any topic without building a time machine. 

 

Everything is, by necessity, speculation.

 

 

 

Previous performance is pretty solid data for estimating future performance.  On the basis of what he did at NUFC, I wouldn’t be overly confident of him making a success of Reading. 

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1 minute ago, TheBrownBottle said:

Previous performance is pretty solid data for estimating future performance.  On the basis of what he did at NUFC, I wouldn’t be overly confident of him making a success of Reading. 

Reading is not Newcastle.

 

The aspirations of the two fanbases are a long way apart, and success for one would be failure for the other.

 

What he did with us can't really be used as a yardstick for whether he'll similarly fail at a far smaller club.

 

I say this as I think when he took over us he really did have the best of intentions. He wanted to be a success. He then realised he didn't have the means (or at least the will to commit such a high percentage of his means) to making it happen, so switched to just bleeding us dry.

 

Reading is a different proposition and if he goes in with far smaller commitments needed to improve them, he could easily get them to a higher level than they're at now, a level which I think is basically a low ebb for them in recent history. 

 

We were a club at (or close to) our peak when he bought us, with big bills that he couldn't (or again, didn't want to) afford. Reading are massively underperforming and anything would feel like success to their fans right now.

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1 minute ago, Chris_R said:

Reading is not Newcastle.

 

The aspirations of the two fanbases are a long way apart, and success for one would be failure for the other.

 

What he did with us can't really be used as a yardstick for whether he'll similarly fail at a far smaller club.

 

I say this as I think when he took over us he really did have the best of intentions. He wanted to be a success. He then realised he didn't have the means (or at least the will to commit such a high percentage of his means) to making it happen, so switched to just bleeding us dry.

 

Reading is a different proposition and if he goes in with far smaller commitments needed to improve them, he could easily get them to a higher level than they're at now, a level which I think is basically a low ebb for them in recent history. 

 

We were a club at (or close to) our peak when he bought us, with big bills that he couldn't (or again, didn't want to) afford. Reading are massively underperforming and anything would feel like success to their fans right now.

 

He spat the dummy out when he realised that there was over £100m of hidden debt which if he'd done his due diligence checks he would have known about.

 

He spent the next 14 years making sure he got every penny of that £100m+ back by bleeding us dry.

 

He was lucky that even though we made very little revenue from advertising/sponsorship due to him plastering SD everywhere the club was still generating big money through other means, PL money, gate receipts etc which he could siphon off.

 

He won't have that luxury at Reading with their 9k crowds.

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Watch him go in and express astonishment at the financial state the club is in. Then state that the club needs to be able to wash its own face, appoint compliant fools as managers and impose a 10 year ambition freeze.

 

What I don't get is that, unlike with us, he's unlikely to find a wealthy buyer to sell to and turn a profit from, nor the profile to advertise and promote his shoddy junk shops.

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16 minutes ago, Abacus said:

Watch him go in and express astonishment at the financial state the club is in. Then state that the club needs to be able to wash its own face, appoint compliant fools as managers and impose a 10 year ambition freeze.

 

What I don't get is that, unlike with us, he's unlikely to find a wealthy buyer to sell to and turn a profit from, nor the profile to advertise and promote his shoddy junk shops.

Yeah it doesn’t make sense, especially when Sheffield Wednesday are effectively up for sale. At least there he would be getting a club with a bigger history, more fans, and people who actually want to go forward which he can pretend to do until he’s called. If Reading go down this season, then you would struggle to think of them ever being able to even reach the Championship again.

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I don't mind this. couldn't care any less about Reading, so it might be nice to have a team to passionately root against again. imagine if he appoints Bruce :drool:

 

we can just sit back and enjoy the ride. hopefully it ends in financial ruin or death

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1 hour ago, Stifler said:

Yeah it doesn’t make sense, especially when Sheffield Wednesday are effectively up for sale. At least there he would be getting a club with a bigger history, more fans, and people who actually want to go forward which he can pretend to do until he’s called. If Reading go down this season, then you would struggle to think of them ever being able to even reach the Championship again.

It'll be little to do with football . How much land does Reading FC stand on ?

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