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Simon Jordan on Mike Ashley selling Newcastle United – Car Crash interview as he forgets what he said last time

5 years ago
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Simon Jordan reckons he is good mates with Mike Ashley.

Not sure exactly what their relationship actually is but the man who was a disaster when owning Crystal Palace, certainly does everything he can to do favours for the Newcastle United owner.

This past week and a half or so had seen a lot of the Mike Ashley simpering clowns come out of the woodwork, with Rio Ferdinand, Dennis Wise, Tim Sherwood and Richard Keys featuring.

So only a question of time before Simon Jordan would appear and distort the picture/muddy the waters, in favour of Ashley.

On 3 December 2018, Mike Ashley went on Sky News and said the sale of Newcastle United was imminent.

As the month dragged on and more and more people were saying this was Ashley messing with the fans yet again, Simon Jordan came to the rescue.

On 27 December he said (see below) that a sale of Newcastle United was definitely happening and that regardless of what happened with how quick the sale went through, Newcastle would definitely be spending money in this transfer window….Simon Jordan – ‘Mike Ashley is going to sell this football club. Now it is not going to hold them back from spending money in January.’

With Mike Ashley’s people now putting out the message that a sale isn’t going to happen, despite having previously said (yet again) that there were loads of serious bidders and not just Peter Kenyon’s alleged group AND not a penny spent this month and only loan bids now even potentially talked about, Simon Jordan has once again appeared on radio.

Totally forgetting his comments 27 days ago about the club definitely being sold and signings definitely being made, Simon Jordan is now all about difficult it is to sell a club and what he has to say actually ridicules the idea that Mike Ashley was ever going to be selling.

Simon Jordan rounding things off with this classic…’And Ashley doesn’t care if they get relegated, he has proven the fact that it doesn’t cost him anything, so he doesn’t care. The only time Mike Ashley will sell Newcastle is when it really starts to cost him something.’

Simon Jordan speaking to Talksport today (Wednesday 23 January):

“There are a lot of questions being asked by certain fan groups that are not understanding why it is taking so long for Newcastle to be sold, or why it is taking so long for Charlton to be sold.

“Not understanding the vagaries and the peculiarities of how football clubs are bought and sold.

“It is like any other business, you do something called due diligence, which means that you evaluate what the club has and doesn’t have, its assets and its liabilities.

“But predominantly in football, the biggest decision is meeting the expectations of an incumbent owner.

“Football is a very immature business in lots of ways. If you look at any other sector there will be banks involved in financing things, institutions involved in financing big transactions of £200m, £300m, £400m, £500m.

“In football, you don’t see those banks and institutions coming to the fore very often, because they don’t view football as a business that is particularly mature.

“They look at it and a player is worth £5m then the next minute is worth £50m.

“One minute a club is getting £125m for being in the Premier League and then two and six for being in the Championship.

“With Newcastle and Charlton, you will see a football club being sold quickly when that football club is in distress.

“When my football club (Crystal Palace) was in distress, when I ran out of money and hit the buffers, along came the vultures to take it for two and six and make a  lot money.

“If you look at Aston Villa, in distress and boom, out flying from nowhere, two billionaire guys.

“When it comes to football clubs that aren’t in distress with owners that can afford to keep them, Duchatelet at Charlton, Mike Ashley at Newcastle, those clubs are not going to be sold until figure the owners want, whether that is justified or not.

“The thing about football and we are all guilty of it, we get locked up in Narnia, we forget that the normal world of business doesn’t look at football the same way that we do and the valuations we put on things.

“If you are in League Two or League One, the baker, the candlestick maker, the butcher, are the guys that buy those football clubs.

“When you are in the Premier League or Championship it is the big guys, that have big dough, that don’t often have an affiliation with the football club and are looking at the economics of it, and are not going to pay £300m for a club like Newcastle, because they are not going to get a return on their money any time soon.

“So the reasons that football clubs like Newcastle and Charlton do not get sold, is because the incumbent owners, will not sell it for anything less than they think it is worth.

“And there are two valuations, what somebody is prepared to pay and what somebody is prepared to sell it for.

“In football they are vastly different.

“So it is not because there are complexities about sell-ons, or about how much players are worth, it is because Ashley wants three or four hundred million quid…and the valuations of those football clubs don’t meet it and it is because planet football lives in a completely different world, and that is why it takes so long.

“And Ashley doesn’t care if they get relegated, he has proven the fact that it doesn’t cost him anything, so he doesn’t care.

“The only time Mike Ashley will sell Newcastle is when it really starts to cost him something.”

The Mag – 27 December 2018:

“Mike Ashley is looking to sell [Newcastle United].

“He’s absolutely looking to sell, unequivocally this time.

“Without a shadow of doubt in my vantage point.

“Without having spoken to Mike in some significant passage of time.

“Reading the signs, reading the deal, knowing how deals get done.

“Last year when [Amanda] Staveley came to the table, I pretty much said this deal won’t get done, there is no way it will get done.

“This time around there is a different feel, there is a different metric to it, there is a different outlook to it.

“Mike Ashley is going to sell this football club.

“Now it is not going to hold them back from spending money in January.

“Because if he gets the right cheque for that, he is going to add it to the ticket.

“If he doesn’t have to write a cheque for it then somebody is paying for it in the meantime, ok that is what it is.

“Due diligence on a football club isn’t that hard, I’ve bought one.

“People make it into a production but there isn’t that much to look at, you know the revenue streams are, you know what the threatened challenges are, you know what the playing squad is worth, you know what the inherent liabilities are.

‘There’s the Premier League checks as well [to be gone through]?’

“Yes, but where there’s a will there’s a way (to get Newcastle sold before the end of January).”

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