Four years ago this week marked the takeover of Newcastle United by the Saudi PIF-led Consortium, and brought to an end the much-maligned ownership of the club by Mike Ashley.
Ashley’s 14 year spell as owner saw us relegated twice, alienated fans and legends alike, and produced some of the worst football and transfers ever seen in the club’s history.
But four years since English football looked to have been finally exorcised of Ashley, there’s rumours circulating that the business magnate could become an owner once again.
And it could spell either potential disaster or relief for one of the game’s oldest and most historic clubs…
According to the Sheffield Star, Mike Ashley is one of the names looking at a potential takeover of Sheffield Wednesday, who are currently in financial turmoil at the bottom of the Championship.
Last month saw the fifth time that the club was unable to pay its players on time, with current owner Dejphon Chansiri having previously hinted he would be open to selling the club if a suitable buyer emerged.
And although there’s no concrete bid from Ashley or any other prospective buyers, a new buyer will need to be found sooner or later before the Owls are condemned to another points deduction and transfer embargo.
Ashley has been mostly absent from the beautiful game since our 2021 takeover, at least at a Premier League level.
The most we as Newcastle fans have heard from him in the last few years was a minor dispute over JD Sports being chosen as our official retailer partner and barring Sports Direct from being able to sell our replica kits.
He did controversially buy Coventry City’s stadium, the CBS Arena, in November 2022. Soon evicting the club from their own ground, it wasn’t until August 2025 that Coventry were able to buy back their own ground from Frasers Group and become the landlords once again.
The new football regulator and its chairman David Kogan have hinted that if Chansiri fails to turn Sheffield Wednesday’s finances around, they could force ‘bad’ owners to sell the club as an absolute last resort.
Speaking to the BBC, Kogan commented “If your question is, ‘would we intervene in the final instance?’, the answer is once we gather the evidence and know what’s going on, we will.”
“But the truth is, when you look back over the history of football, over the last 20 or 30 years there have been some owners, not many, but some who have been irresponsible in the way which they’ve been managing their clubs and ultimately don’t wish to take responsibility for the future.”
Should Ashley emerge as the only viable candidate, there could be a very possible situation where Sheffield Wednesday is sold to him by force.
And in the eyes of the EFL, Ashley would be seen as a fiscally-responsible and ‘safe’ owner for the troubled club. His billionaire status seen as the much-needed lifeline for the Steel City side.