Neil Cameron excellent on Ashley

Any remaining pro-Ashley dreamers amongst our support must read this article in today's Evening Times.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Anyone claiming to know exactly what Mike Ashley plans to do next is a liar.

Educated guesses can be made about what his next move might be and what his motives are, but nobody is so close to him that they can say for sure. It is fitting for a man who loves a bet that his cards are never off his chest.

Rangers supporters woke up on Sunday morning to a newspaper claiming Ashley is looking to make a move for their club. There was talk of £30m being put to Dave King, the plan being that his long-standing rival would be ushered back out of Ibrox.

We will find out soon enough how much is in this.

But allow me one of those educated guesses as to why and why not Ashley might be considering making an imminent move on King and Rangers.

Let's start with the non-reasons and that is he is, to quote the People, "shocked at the state of the club and is promising significant investment if a takeover deal can be struck."

The idea Ashley is looking at the Premiership table and the gap between his, cough, team and Celtic, and finding it just too much to take is laughable.

Anybody who believes this strange and not particularly nice man, whose appalling business activities meant he had to explain himself to Parliament, believes he is the man to sort out that back four needs to up their medication.

During Ashley's ownership of Newcastle United, a football club I covered for three years, they have been relegated twice, went 18 months without making a permanent transfers, had two other seasons when relegation was only avoided in the last few games, appointed Joe Kinnear as Director of Football (aren't Rangers looking for one of them?), signed lots of average French players, ignored the supporters' wishes, had the biggest fans group expelled from the official Fans Forum and then there was the Kevin Keegan scandal.

Ashley hired Denis Wise as the man to do the deals and he, above the head of Keegan then in his second spell as manager, signed someone called Ignacio González on loan as a favour to South American agents.

Keegan, nothing short of a God on Tyneside, successfully sued for constructive dismissal and won £2m.

The 2009 hearing declared that the club had admitted to "repeatedly and intentionally misleading the press, public and the fans of Newcastle United," and that the evidence given by Ashley and his fellow executives over the course of the two-week hearing was described at one point in the verdict as "profoundly unsatisfactory".

Does all of this make you think the man cares about Newcastle United? Indeed, has he done anything over the past three years or so to hint that he give a flying flip about Rangers?

The People quoted a source as saying; "The current situation is unacceptable – Mike knows that. Rangers are set to finish behind Aberdeen and are more than 30 points behind Celtic. He is prepared to invest but he will not work with the current owner, who he feels has done little for the club in the past two years."

Ashley, who owns nine per cent of Rangers, has either become a big bluenose or instead, and history does rather bear this out, hates King, loves doing deals, and as he seems to have no other interests apart from gambling, believes he might as well have some what he would call fun.

Perhaps we should have suspected something was amiss when the charmless Derek Llambias popped up on SkySports, two weeks ago, apparently as concerned about Rangers as the bloke who has had a season ticket in the Copland upper for the past 30 years.

Ashley's henchman said: "Last time I spoke to you guys when we were voted off I asked ‘where was the money? where was the cash? There was no money, there was no Nomad, there’s no listing and we’re two years on and it’s exactly the same. Where is the money?

“To be honest with you, the club has got great history, wonderful traditions and they just need somebody with a lot of money behind it who are going to produce the goods."

Now King is hardly an impressive character to many who believe he says one thing and does something else, something cheaper.

However, take it from someone whose previous job was to watch Ashley's movements and try to make sense out of them; for all King's faults, for that there are legitimate questions of how Rangers is being run, just about any other option is better than allowing Ashley to have any more influence at Ibrox.

Look at his record at Newcastle United. Watch him claiming to MPs he had no idea about how many Sports Direct workers were on zero hour contracts. Read up on what the British business community, not usually the most liberal of bodies, feels about him.

Then ask yourself whether Mike Ashley really does have strong views about Rangers' league position.