Articles

Keep Your Eyes Open For The Revenge Of Mike Ashley

|
Image for Keep Your Eyes Open For The Revenge Of Mike Ashley

There’s a great movie, which I always enjoy, called Lucky Number Slevin. It’s a funny, well written and brilliantly executed crime flick where the hapless titular character gets sucked into a major barney between two heavy duty gangland bosses, due to a “mistaken identity.”

The movie opens with a “chance meeting” in a bus terminal, where Bruce Willis talks a fellow passenger through what con artists call The Kansas City Shuffle.

Of all the confidence games out there, this is the most original. The Kansas City Shuffle is unique in that it’s the one con where the mark knows he’s being scammed; he just doesn’t know how. And when he reacts to what he thinks the con is, that leaves him wide open to the real one.

Willis’ simplified explanation that “Whilst everybody looks left ….” works for the start of the movie, but by the end we’ve seen a far more complicated (and cool) version!

I’ve been thinking about the Kansas City Shuffle a lot lately, as it could apply to Sevco, and due to an especially insightful interview The Scottish Football Monitor has done with David Low I figure it’s time to write about some of where my thoughts have taken me.

Ashley’s most prominent move lately has been to take Sevco to court. But what if it’s not all that he’s been up to? As Low points out in the TSFM podcast, Sevco is wide open to a takeover bid, whether willingly or not. The possibility exists. Their position is weak.

If someone wanted to do it and had the financial wherewithal then they could start the process.

Low knows that better than anyone; it was exactly the plan he outlined for Fergus McCann back when they were trying to take over Celtic. In the end, that plan was executed brilliantly, and it started with he and his colleagues acquiring small stakes, building up a holding bit by little bit.

It took a while, but they had the luxury of time on their side.

Let’s be clear, I’m not suggesting that someone – Ashley or anyone else – is trying to buy control of Sevco. Ashley doesn’t need control of the company to wreck havoc. All he needs is to bring his shareholding up to a point where he can easily block the board’s more elaborate plans, such as calling an EGM to bring forth a new share issue.

King did everything he could to get to the 75% he needed to get the share issue proposal over the line at the AGM last month. He couldn’t pull it off.

Don’t be fooled by how narrowly he was defeated either. The 0.4% deficit would have been higher had Blue Pitch contested their ban from voting, and those shares may well be up for grabs, or their proxies anyway.

If Ashley can block an EGM or the share issue vote for passing at one, he can deal this club a death blow. All he has to do is wait until the money runs out. Nobody is coming to their aid, and he knows it and they know it too. At the very least he can try to force King to quit. He may yet end up with his proxies running the whole thing; in an administration it would all be up in the air.

Ashley can open up a second front on the football side though. Ian Cathro has just been appointed manager of Hearts. If he approached Ashley for loan signings it’s hard to believe he’d meet much resistance. Newcastle still has a cadre of highly paid players sitting in the reserves; what better way to move them on for a while than loan them out to the Tynecastle club?

Cathro is already being written off by many sections of the Scottish press, this in spite of the same people being nearly orgasmic when he was linked with Sevco before Warburton’s appointment. They might have short memories, or they might just hope that we do. No such luck.

Cathro already has experience working in leagues few manager’s who’ve ever come to Scotland possess. He has friends at clubs all over Europe, at top tier sides. His landing a big job was a matter of time. He will be a huge success at Hearts. His appointment might well be the game-changer we needed in terms of finally getting a challenge.

The Sevco board must be worried about Ashley and not because of the court case. If he decides to pull a Kansas City Shuffle there are various avenues open to him for making real trouble, and he could do it, easily, without doing a heck of a lot of work.

A lot of Sevco’s fans are focussed on the manager. A lot of them are focussed on stuff that has nothing whatsoever to do with football. Their board are trying to raise money and worrying about the depleting accounts. King does all of this from South Africa. Paul Murray would rather give lectures on how to lose cash, to accountants who can’t learn a thing from him.

Ashley has survived major scandal and a cross parliamentary investigation. He has more time on hands to make mischief if he so desires.

And while everyone’s looking left …. he can have his revenge.

Share this article