Mike Ashley is understood to be one of the leading contenders to become the new owner of Sheffield Wednesday. Newcastle United fan Kurt Leyland explains why despite what happened at the club he supports, Ashley would be a good fit at Hillsborough

To describe Mike Ashley as an unpopular figure at Newcastle United would be an understatement.

In fact, any praise for the Sports Direct tycoon in the land of Black and White would probably leave you black and blue for even daring to be so antagonistic.

Mike Ashley made plenty of mistakes as Newcastle United owner

Ashley spent a total of 14 years as owner of the North East club, and for almost all of those years Magpies supporters were calling for his head and wishing someone else would take over.

However, it wasn’t always this way. For context, when Ashley first bought the club from Freddy Shepherd and Sir John Hall for £134m in 2007, he was fairly well received. He’d help clear nearly £100m of debt and was seen drinking with Magpies supporters at away matches in the early weeks.

Ashley even brought back the ‘messiah’ Kevin Keegan just six months after joining, in a sentimental move to get supporters onside, but it wouldn’t be long before that all turned toxic.

Keegan resigned just weeks into the 2008/09 season due to Ashley’s decision to appoint former Chelsea midfielder Dennis Wise as Director of Football. Keegan felt Wise’s power over transfers undermined his position as manager.

While he also claimed after departing that he had wanted to sign an up-and-coming Luka Modric, but that was apparently ignored, with the club instead signing a striker in Xisco, that he had reportedly never even heard of, and Nacho Gonzalez, who was reportedly only identified by scouts based on grainy YouTube footage.

Newcastle were relegated in 2008/09, just two years into the Ashley era, marking a significant fall from grace for a team that had competed for titles under Keegan (first time around in the mid 1990s) while enjoying famous European nights under Bobby Robson in the early 2000s, with the latter leaving just three years before Ashley’s takeover.

It would be the first of two relegations the St James’ Park outfit would suffer from the Premier League under Ashley’s ownership with the other coming in 2016.

Ultimately, most supporters felt Ashley’s only ambition at Newcastle was to keep the club ticking along in the top-flight and pick up the Premier League prize money.

Ashley’s managerial appointments were also often viewed by supporters as uninspiring. The likes of Steve Bruce, Steve McLaren and Alan Pardew all came from clubs in lower divisions - Wednesday in the case of Bruce - while names like Chris Hughton and John Carver had very limited managerial experience, despite the former performing well.

Only Rafa Benitez, who steered the club to the Championship title, was managing in the top-flight before taking the reins at St James’ Park. He in particular was a vocal critic of Ashley for his failure to back him enough in the transfer window.

Why Ashley should still be welcome at Sheffield Wednesday despite Newcastle spell

Overall, Newcastle qualified for Europe just once under Ashley - a far cry from the eight continental campaigns they’d enjoyed in the 15 years prior to his appointment.

However, there’s no doubt that he’s certainly an upgrade on someone like Dejphon Chansiri, and at the very least a steady pair of hands that’d be able to stabilise the club during a turbulent time.

For starters, everyone at Newcastle always got paid on time during Ashley’s tenure as owner. They never received a points deduction when he was there, and the club were almost always on a stable financial footing under his stewardship despite him inheriting the club when they were in a significant amount of debt.

In short, Ashley is a very good businessman, as his retail empire proves, and to have someone of his ability on that front running Sheffield Wednesday is a far cry from what has gone on in the past 10 years under Chansiri.

Ashley’s arrival, if he does become owner, would most likely settle things down at Hillsborough fairly quickly, and it’s hard to imagine it’d be too long before the club would be back in the Championship if he was to take the reins.

After all, the two occasions where he did show any level of relative ambition at Newcastle were in the Championship after relegation, the first in 2009/10, where he funded the wages of big names like Nicky Butt, Alan Smith, Kevin Nolan and Andy Carroll and in 2016/17 where he brought in the likes of Dwight Gayle, Matt Ritchie and Ciaran Clark. In both of those campaigns the team secured promotion by a landslide.

Ashley was also fairly patient with his appointments - only sacking two managers in his whole time as Newcastle owner, while he never really interfered with the football side of the operation, although some of his appointments were at times questionable to say the least.