View From: Mike Ashley’s Ownership, Analogy

I see Mike Ashleys NUFC ownership a bit like buying a classic car with a lot of history as a hobby for quite a lot of money.

At first you do a bit work to it, get rid of the engine that works perfectly and replace it with an at times excellent but very temperamental one. You put out a lot of money at first but then you realise that you’re bored of it as a hobby and decide you cant be bothered anymore. So you stop filling it up with oil and stop washing/waxing it. You then take it for MOT and it just say passes but you’re warned that it wont pass next year if you don’t do a lot of work to it.

So you ignore the advice and decide that it’ll be fine, after all you can keep reminding yourself that you’ve paid a lot of money at the start for it. Over the next year you realise that the car doesn’t really need to flashy spoiler, the twin exhaust and the nice pop-up headlamps. So you take them out and sell them, and only replace them at the last minute with cheaper and un-tested versions that aren’t really meant for that model of car.

Some people come to see you from classic car magazine and they’re pissed with you, they say your ruining their beloved classic and you should stop now and restore it, you just laugh.

The next time you want to take the car out it only just struggles to start so you take it into a cheap, east London dodgy garage to fix it up. you explain that you want rid of the car – as its not safe to drive your children in! So you tell the dodgy garage owner to flog it for you at 4 times the price you paid for it. The owner tells you that you can get double that price with a bit of work, but if not, it may not even get you home. You listen to him and decide to splash a little, but not a lot of money to the cockney boys garage in exchange for the extra parts. But rather than getting parts you need, you get an extra steering wheel, a spare set of wheels and a second exhaust. Rather than get the new radiator and oil filter the car is desperate for.

On the way home it finally breaks down, but you’ve had enough and just leave it. You figure why should it be your problem and leave it by the side of the road to rot. A few months pass and nothings happened. A few local people have seen your car and offer you an little bit of money for it, but you figure that the car will be alright and if you can just leave it until its MOT time again you might be able to fluke your way out of it with a fake certificate to get it back on the road and once there sell it for the original price you paid.

Unfortunately in that time the original owners of the car have gotten some unpaid parking tickets in the post as you forgot to fully change over the details of the car. They take you to court and sue you for a substantial sum of money. But you don’t care, as you can just take it out of your dodgy insurance policy. You know that in the end no matter what happens to the car, you’ll always have some other cars and buses to make some cash so why not just let it rot by the side of the road or get towed away to scrap.

In fact, you’d quite like to see your investment wasted just to see the poor adoring fans of the car from classic car magazine crying, knowing they’re doing it because of you.

Original post by Morty