Advertisement

Newcastle Fan View: Is Mike Ashley about to sell Magpies?

Most Newcastle United fans will be over the moon with the breaking news this morning that Mike Ashley is considering selling the club and they will be preying Ashley gets as far away from the North East in his helicopter as fast as possible but is the grass always greener? No, most definitely not. The news this morning is that Ashley is prepared to lower his £400m+ asking price and that some interested parties have already signed non-disclosure agreements over the last few weeks. Is there anything in the rumours though? Remember when a lot of newspapers reported in the summer that we were to get Chinese investment and then the stories just seemed to disappear?

Mike Ashley bought the club a decade ago and has overseen two relegations, numerous managerial sackings, has made mistake after mistake and has a developed a truly toxic relationship with most of the fans. He has gone on record to say he will no longer be putting money in to the club and that the club must generate it’s own money for transfers and wages. This consigns Newcastle United to a constant battle to stay in the league, a constant battle to keep the manager and a club that has little to no ambition which will struggle to attract the best players across Europe.

READ MORE: 10 things to look out for this weekend

READ MORE: Amazon and Facebook ‘want’ Premier League rights

READ MORE: De Bruyne, a drug test and a lot of questions – Mendy reveals origin of Man City move

I think for me, Ashley needs to go and for regular readers of my blogs, you’ll know that is not something I have said all that often.

I want to be clear on this, I am no Ashley fan, I don’t necessarily hate the guy and I definitely don’t throw blame on him for everything that goes wrong with Newcastle United (last week I read an article on Les Ferdinand’s time at the club and how it was a shame he left and two of the comments blamed Ashley). Ashley has made numerous mistakes and he hasn’t seemed to learn from them and now he has gone on record to say he will not be putting any more money in to the club I would question why he bothers anymore? One reason, Sports Direct. Obviously, he is a business man and he is in it for the money. His company has benefited from advertising being beamed out to billions of people around of the world, all for free. Let’s not kid ourselves, he owns Newcastle United as a platform to promote is profitable businesses.

It is clear that to compete in the Premier League, something that Ashley has no intention of allowing us to do, you need to have money and lots of it. Ashley constantly says he can’t compete with clubs who are backed by a nation and he has a point, no-one can – the likes of Manchester United, Manchester City and Chelsea operate at a different level and it is no surprise to see those clubs sitting in the top three spots (although it is nice to be fourth).

If Ashley does sell, it will be interesting to see who buys it. There is an alleged asking price of £380m which will mean he claws back what he has spent and most, if not all of, what he has pumped in to the club but will anyone want to spend that much on us? For now, we can just put it down to paper talk but the story is gathering some momentum and there seems to be something in it. We can hope there is some truth in it but also be mindful that when foreign investors come in, for every Abramovic and Mansour, there is a Venkys, Cellino and Tan.