I have a mate who lives in the vicinity of Ansty who was always convinced that Sports Direct moving its HQ to Ansty was a done deal as soon as the consultations started in the area. He got friendly through that process with a local parish councillor who apparently told him that it was all done and dusted last week apart from the announcement, the new HQ that is not Ashley taking over CCFC. The point I’m making is that Ashley does have a history of investing in other projects in an area where he’s making a large investment. IIRC he’s moving the HQ from Newcastle to Ansty so it does kind of tie in. I have no insider information about whether he has an interest in the club or not but it is an easy assumption to come to given his history in Newcastle before you even factor in that Fraser Group owns the CBS. I don’t think it’s relevant that he no longer sits on the board of Fraser Group, as someone else pointed out he owns that through his investment company MASH, I think he also owned NUFC through MASH and not sports direct or what is now Fraser Group.
At the end of the day we won’t get a say in who owns the club so it’s kind of irrelevant either way. My big concern with Ashley as owner is that for someone who threw a shit load of money at it he didn’t achieve much for his money. They brought a whole lot of average Premier League players for better than average fees and no doubt better than average wages. I always suspected he might have had too much involvement in the day to day and wondered how much saying the managers had in the signings and how much was Ashley playing football manager or at least director of football without any great knowledge of the game. Which would worry me if he did own us as we have a formula that’s working and an over involved owner with an overinflated opinion of what he can bring to the club in terms of football expertise. If he came, put his faith in the manager and staff, stayed in the background signing cheques it could work, but it was clear that he liked being front and centre at Newcastle, never went as far as putting on a tracksuit and sitting on the bench but putting on a shirt and sitting in with the punters was a strange dynamic too for an owner at that level.
