Newcastle United owners now making some very different business moves compared to Mike Ashley | OneFootball

We have now passed 20 months with the club owned by the ‘new’ Newcastle United owners.

It has been a whirlwind.

Difficult for Newcastle United fans to even catch a breath, as the club has changed so much, on and off the pitch, following a decade and a half of Mike Ashley.

The new Newcastle United owners have moved to a setting of growing the club as quickly as possible, bringing wins and hopefully trophies on the pitch and growing revenues off it.

The idea of course is that by making the club as successful as possible on and off the pitch, at then some time in the future these Newcastle United owners will make a massive profit on their original investment, when they sell the club.

Nothing wrong with that of course, I’m all for it. That is pretty much how all clubs are set up, the owners aren’t lifelong fans, they simply saw a great business opportunity. It is a win/win with the NUFC fanbase, the Newcastle United owners are full on trying to win trophies and play in the Champions League every season which at the same time makes the club ever more financially stronger, what is not to like?

It is simply a case of both (Newcastle United owners and the fans) wanting the same outcome (success on the pitch and hopefully leading to silverware) but just for very different reasons (financial profit and other benefits for the Newcastle United owners, whilst for fans it is simply watching a successful team playing great football).

That may sound obvious to you all, Newcastle United owners wanting the team to be successful and for revenues to rise as much as possible to support that.

However, 14 years of Mike Ashley tells you it very much hasn’t always been that way at St James’ Park.

Mike Ashley had a unique way of running a Premier League club.

Whilst pretty much every other owner of a PL club looked to find every possible way as to how their wider business empire could help and benefit the football club and make it stronger, more competitive, more powerful, leading to hopefully far more valuable in the future.

Instead, over the course of 14 years, for Mike Ashley it was a case of extracting as much personal profit and additional benefits for himself and his wider business empire, at the expense of his football club!

I used to alternate between anger and manic laughing, as when Newcastle United fans protested about the shameful way Mike Ashley was running NUFC, the pundits, ex-pros, charlatans, journalists, presenters, rival fans and so on, all (with very rare exceptions) replied with ‘who do you think are, why do you think you deserve more than this, your club is nothing special, deluded fans…’

As fans, we all knew the potential of Newcastle United, after all, you only needed to look at the 14 Premier League seasons before Mike Ashley arrived, to see very clear clues as to what NUFC could be capable of.

None of us knew it at the time when Mike Ashley bought the club in 2007 but very shortly afterwards, Sir John Hall said that Ashey’s people had told him that the reason he (Ashley) was buying the club, was to then use Newcastle United to promote his business empire around the globe, boost profits year on year.

As his business empire was rooted in the sports industry, it looked a great fit, what could possibly go wrong.

None of us could have truly grasped how ruthless and extreme (and miserable, for the fans) the Mike Ashley plan was for Newcastle United.

After all, even for those taking Hall’s words on board as to why Mike Ashley had bought Newcastle United, then surely for his business empire to get maximum benefits from him owning Newcastle United, Ashley had to make NUFC successful on and off the pitch.

Boost revenues as much as possible off the pitch and obviously make the team as successful as possible on the pitch, clearly the way to go.

If only.

Instead, Mike Ashley had found another way. A route that if it worked, would massively boost his private wealth and that of the rest of his business empire, BUT would basically leave Newcastle United in an eternal coma and/or flatlining…

The Mike Ashley plan for Newcastle United was simply to survive in the Premier League, whilst at the same time allowing as little money as possible to be spent by NUFC in achieving that zero ambition existence.

For Mike Ashley, it didn’t matter what position Newcastle ended up in the Premier League, so long as it was 17th or higher.

Seventeenth or higher meant guaranteed worldwide TV exposure via the far reaching Premier League broadcast deals.

Mike Ashley covering every part of Newcastle United, especially St James’ Park, with Sports Direct (and related companies) branding, with not a penny going into the football club, apart from a few years when a pittance was paid by SD.

Mike Ashley did end up selling Newcastle United for a profit BUT far more than that, over the course of owning NUFC for 14 years, the football club played a key role in turning the FCB from a billionaire into a multi-billionaire.

A miserable existence for the supporters of the club for almost a decade and a half but fair to say Mike Ashley couldn’t give a… damn.

It was very much like a slum landlord buying a load of rundown properties. Spending not a penny on them that he wasn’t forced to for 14 years and at the same time extracting every pound of profit he possibly could. Then still managing to sell at a decent profit as well compared to what he had paid originally, but with no investment in that time, the properties in a far worse state than when he took over.

That was Mike Ashley with Newcastle United.

The infrastructure a shambles, the training ground not fit for purpose, the Academy in desperate shape and the first thing the new Newcastle United owners did was give the outside of St James’ Park the first proper wash it had had in over 14 years!

As for those he employed and the state of the playing side.

By October 2021, Mike Ashley had Newcastle United booked on a one way relegation journey (third of his time in control) and the dream team of Lee Charnley and Steve Bruce as CEO and Head Coach.

The new Newcastle United owners arriving just in the nick of time, or else where would we have been now???