Ally McCoist is one of those guys who can’t stay out of the newspapers for very long without getting the itch to see himself in the headlines. It no longer surprises me when he comes out with the worst kind of nonsense, as he has done today.
I refer, of course, to the Mike Ashley story. The idea that Iron Mike of Sports Direct might come charging up the hill on his white steed and save Sevco from impending financial doom.
It is not a new idea. McCoist is the not the first to suggest it.
But it’s no less mad for being a re-tread of a re-tread of a re-tread.
Derek Johnstone has come out with this before, and some of the other hacks have expressed their own view that it should be done. It does feel kinda daft to be going over it again when the idea is so out there, but clearly it needs doing, especially with the large number of Sevco supporters online who seem to think that some kind of deal could be done.
The one thing the Peepul just cannot wrap their brains around is that their club is not attractive as “an investment”.
Because what they mean, of course, is that someone should come in and pour money into it.
That’s not “investing”. That’s throwing it away.
And neither Ashley nor any other top business person made their fortune doing that.
The chance of this happening are zero.
I know that will not please some of them to read that; so many Sevco fans really did believe Ashley wanted to turn them into a super-club. I hate to break it to them, but he didn’t. This is a busted flush, like waiting for the fabled “Chinese investors” some on the blogs and Twitter seem to believe are on their way.
Nobody is coming to save that club.
Here are some of the reasons why … and especially why it won’t be Ashley.
Ashley Still Has A Football Club And He Badly Wants Rid Of It
The first problem is pretty obvious; Mike Ashley still has control of a football club right now.
The deal to sell Newcastle has collapsed, and reading Ashley’s comments on that you can tell that this guy is pretty pissed off that it has. Ashley would dump Newcastle right now if he thought he could find a serious buyer. He’s grown bored with it.
There was a time when owning a football club was every tycoon’s dream.
They were the “must have” plaything of about twenty years ago. They opened doors. They were a glamorous purchase. They were sexy. That was before transfer fees sky-rocketed, before salaries went through the roof, before some of the clubs were bought by people for whom money really was no object.
Guys like Ashley are going through a prolonged period of Buyer’s Remorse.
During the boom, a football club that was on the market – especially an EPL one – didn’t stay there for very long. Investment houses, oversees billionaires … they would have been queuing up to spend their cash on it. Ashley has had Newcastle for sale for years.
Exactly one deal has got to the point where he announced it.
And that one just fell through.
Now, stuck with one club he doesn’t want, Ashley is going to buy a second one? For what purpose? Hard as this is for most Sevco fans to swallow, he never wanted total control of their club the first time he made the club part of his business empire.
Ashley had exactly what he wanted back then; a retail deal he was doing very nicely out of and enough shares to prevent anyone from trying to tear it up. The man is not stupid. His objectives were pretty clear-cut.
And if he wasn’t interested in owning them then, why the Hell would he want to now?
Sports Direct Doesn’t Need The “Advertising Board Of Ibrox” Or The Sevco Brand.
This is the one their fans cling to, the big reason why they believe this guy might want to sweep in and turn the club into a European giant. Because he wants, he needs, the “exposure” of European football, to maximise the value of his brand.
Honest to God, how stupid do you have to be not to spot the holes – the obvious, glaring, massive holes – in that nonsense? Yet not only do some of the Sevco fans believe it but there was a lot of chatter about this in the media when he was still a power player at Ibrox.
The ignorance in this assertion is manifest.
First, Newcastle United are back in the Premiership and that gives every televised game they have at home easily the global TV reach of the average Champions League tie. The highlights packages are shown in more than 50 countries. Newcastle is a perfect vehicle for Mike Ashley to promote his “global brand.”
Besides, how much more promoting can he do?
Ashley is a top class businessman who has turned his company into the world’s biggest sports retailer, and whilst a guy like that will never rest on his laurels it’s difficult to see how buying a clapped out Scottish NewCo can make them better.
Sevco fans boast of a global fan-base, but numerous events down through the years have proven that to be little more than wishful thinking and arrant nonsense. When they played in Florida last week they did so in front of mostly empty stands. When the Sevco “global brand” did manage to get on the telly, it was their scummy supporters singing sectarian songs for which the company behind the tournament later had to issue an apology?
What does that do for your “global brand” when you have to wade through the muck?
Besides, what kind of idiot would spend a fortune buying a football club just for the advertising board around the ground?
Maybe it’s just me who thinks what you’d do instead is … buy the advertising boards. Which, anyone, doesn’t work in UEFA competitions because the rules of the tournament mean all those boards are taken by official sponsors.
You can see what I mean about this having “one or two holes” in it, right?
Ashley Knows Now What The Sevco Fans And Their Demands Are Like.
It isn’t just that Mike Ashley does not need Sevco in his life.
He doesn’t need the grief that accompanies every facet of the club either.
That’s a substantial barrier to Ashley, or anyone else, deciding to put their money into Basket Case FC and the size of it should not be underestimated. The club itself swallows money like a black hole, but that has never been enough for the media which promotes its interests or the fans who follow it.
The demands of the Sevco support are, to put it bluntly, absolutely insane.
They will never settle for being in our shadow and every reversal increases the volume with which they demand parity at the very least. Anyone who takes over that club will have to suffer the most appalling ingratitude, the most ludicrous sense of supremacy in the stands.
No matter what sacrifices are made, no matter how money is spent, it will never be enough to satisfy The Peepul and their need to be “back where they belong” as if a six year old NewCo has actually been anywhere to boast about.
The toxic Survival and Victim lies are cancerous.
Anyone who comes in and who wants to sell season tickets would need to shamelessly pander to both.
On top of that, the rampant sectarianism which still exists in sections of their fan base is dangerous to any business associated with them.
The debacle over in Florida proved that, and it’s not the only example of course.
Confronting that stuff means that an owner would need to go head to head with the lunatic fringe of the support … and who needs that kind of trouble if they can avoid it?
Ashley Has No Reason To Trust Scotland’s Media Or The Football Authorities.
Mike Ashley will not return to run a club in Scotland under any circumstances. He would not be able to sit through the first press conference without calling people out on the nonsense they have talked about him and his companies and the way he behaved at Ibrox. Ashley kept their operation afloat; we all know that for a fact.
They showed no gratitude to him.
The media were disgraceful in the way they lambasted Ashley and promoted the cause of Dodgy Dave King.
There was absolutely no analysis of what was actually going on at Ibrox during that spell; they simply swallowed the King line and pushed his so-called revolution.
Sports Direct had funded the club through a difficult period, offering draw-down facilities no bank would ever have given them. All of that was ignored by hacks who wanted their man in.
Ashley is not a guy who easily stomachs hypocrisy and he would have to deal with it by the bucket-load if he was actually to wind up at Ibrox again.
Many who slammed him as a wrecker would be hailing him as a hero and he wouldn’t put up with that. He would also know that it wouldn’t last long; the first hint of trouble would see them call for him to go again.
Which brings us to the SFA.
They have their own issues with Ashley. He took them to court whereas many Scottish clubs – and yes, I mean Celtic – have bottled out of doing battle with them directly through the legal system. Ashley had no qualms about doing it, and he has made his disdain for them quite clear.
They would have a spiky relationship to say the least.
Ashley would be fighting a multi-front war before he even started.
Under No Circumstances Will He Work With Dodgy Dave King Or His Board.
Which brings us to the final point; in order to secure a controlling interest, Ashley would have to go head to head with Dodgy Dave King and his board, and oust them from their current posts. Because under no circumstances would the man from Sports Direct work with the South African career criminal or any of his unprofessional acolytes.
That would necessitate a raging war with the Scottish press, with a large section of the Sevco support and with King himself. And all for what? Ad boards and aggro?
It makes zero sense.
The idea that Ashley could be tempted to come and work with the current Ibrox regime is nonsensical. He knows these people haven’t got a pot to piss in or a clue what to do with it even if they did. He isn’t going to play a secondary role whilst King lords it up either.
The scenario of Ashley swooping in only makes sense if it’s to oust the current charlatans in charge of the club. And any chance of that happening went by the board the minute the media and the fans turned against Ashley to promote those very same people.
Ashley is a top businessman. King is a corrupt huckster, a wide-boy who conned his way to a fortune and then lost the lot of it to the South African tax man.
Think Ashley wants to be touched by the Cold Shoulder? Not in this lifetime.
When you consider that King tried to blame him for everything that he was doing wrong, you can’t imagine any scenario where they team up.
Sevco Is In A Cold Dark Place From Which No-One Is Coming To Save Them.
That club and its arrogant directors have caused every problem which currently haunts them. They are the architects of their own dire financial position. They have spent money they couldn’t afford to. They have alienated potential allies. They have caused consternation and anger amongst their commercial partners and they have worked to make enemies where others would have been building bridges. And their fans support it all, of course.
Ashley is not the only rumour out there. They do still believe in nonsense about American investors, Far East consortiums, Arab billionaires. They really do believe that their club is special, a global institution who strangers in strange lands hold some affection for. But really, who would care about a provincial Scottish club which prides itself on being uber-British?
When you manage to make yourself a pariah club in your own homeland, who in the rest of the world is really going to care about you?
Anyone who “invested” in them would know the word itself is a inapplicable. They are not looking for “investors”, which is to say people who want a return on what they put in. They want sugar daddy owners who will let them live the dream with someone else’s money. They want a return to the Ibrox “grand old days of yore” when Murray was spending the banks cash on big signings and nobody was asking if the whole thing was built on sand.
They want quick fixes, instant answers, jam right now and not tomorrow.
And they reserve the right to pour bile on anyone who doesn’t give them all of it that same second. They had a genuine billionaire on the board when Ashley was there, someone who brought expertise and business acumen. They wanted none of that. They wanted his money. They wanted to empty his pockets. Nothing less will do.
They’re not looking for a saviour, a Fergus McCann … they are looking for a mug, and one with deep pockets. And those guys do not reach the pinnacle of success.
Sevco fans are living in a fantasy. Mike Ashley is just one manifestation of it. But he’s the name some of them return to over and over again, kidding themselves on that there was a time when he cared, when was ready to spend big on them.
Even if it was true, they made sure he walked. Their greed and arrogance and latent desire that the only safe pair of hands was one willing to squander their future on chasing dreams, their longing for a Real Rangers Man at the helm, in spite of the damage they did previously … it caused the guy to throw his arms and the air and say “to Hell with this.”
There’s no winding back the clock. The dream is over.
Sevco is in a cold dark place. No-one is coming to save them from it.