Top 45 Quotes & Sayings by Mike Ashley

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a British businessman Mike Ashley.
Last updated on September 18, 2024.
Mike Ashley

Michael James Wallace Ashley is a British billionaire retail entrepreneur focused in the sporting goods market, and the chief executive of Frasers Group Plc. He entered the department store industry following the acquisition of House of Fraser post-administration in 2018. He was formerly the owner of Newcastle United football club having bought it for £135 million in 2007 until selling the club in October 2021.

I am hopeful for the Newcastle fans, for the club, for everybody that I will be able to step aside and we will be able to get an owner in that will please everybody.
I was a little bit shocked at quite how football was more like the wild west.
I'm not Father Christmas, I'm actually a very fair guy. — © Mike Ashley
I'm not Father Christmas, I'm actually a very fair guy.
Alan Shearer came in at a time when he was one of the only people on this planet who could have kept Newcastle up and he did a fantastic job in everything else but the odd result not going his way.
What we would like to do is introduce a 'concierge click and collect' at House of Fraser. When you go online and say you want to collect goods in-store, you should be able to book a time, book a changing room and book a stylist.
We think the biggest and most important thing House of Fraser is missing is luxury brands.
People will say 'how can you have a plane when your workers are on minimum wage?' I said 'but I don't set the minimum wage.' If the minimum wage would be the living wage, then the Government who set the rules should set it at the living wage. That's how I look at it.
I am wedded to Newcastle like Sports Direct. They've got me and I've got them. That's just the way it is.
Once you start to spiral a company down, you lose the momentum.
I wanted to help Newcastle, I wanted to make it better. I do not seem to have had that effect.
Sports Direct is on course to become the 'Selfridges of sport' by migrating to a new generation of stores.
Do I regret getting into football? The answer is yes. I have had tonnes of fun in it but I haven't been able to make the difference I wanted to like I have at Sports Direct.
I do fly to work by helicopter. It's a reality. — © Mike Ashley
I do fly to work by helicopter. It's a reality.
Sports Direct should come with a government health warning - this stock is not for the fainthearted.
The media circus surrounding Sports Direct... only proves that whatever progress Sports Direct makes, it will always be subject to disproportionate scrutiny and misrepresentation.
You get to the top of one mountain and then you see another.
I'm not the thickest person on the planet.
Criticism is a funny thing, because I think if you want to be something, create something or make a difference in any walk of life you have to be hugely self-critical.
What person could keep 59 stores open - beside God? It's impossible, it can't be done.
If you're trying to portray that I take massive business decisions in pubs and bars, then that is total crap. It is not the norm, otherwise I'd have to live in a pub because I take business decisions all day, every day.
I would not get to know every single thing that happens in Sports Direct.
It's not my fault the high street is dying... It's very very simple, the Internet is killing the high street.
I'm not a clicks man, I wasn't born in the clicks era. I'm a bricks man, I believe in bricks.
It's one of the amazing things about owning a football club, the way you get caught up. It's like someone has put something in your coffee. You look around, you want to lift the place, hit the ground running.
Corbyn is not only a liar but clueless.
The school I went to was only famous for one thing... Peter Osgood went to that particular school. That's probably my earliest memory of the importance of football.
It is true that I have conducted and do conduct business discussions in an informal environment form time to time. However I don't just turn up to a venue with someone and negotiate a binding agreement over few hours over drinks.
I periodically lose my phone, damage my phone, have my phone stolen - what ever happens to mobile phones happens to me.
In Harrods you get some exceptional services.
I accept House of Fraser cannot have 500,000 square feet in Birmingham. Honestly, you would need an Uber to take you round. It's ridiculous.
Honestly, I am fat enough. I don't need any more food. — © Mike Ashley
Honestly, I am fat enough. I don't need any more food.
I don't care what people say, it's very difficult to keep a player when they want to go. The age of slavery is dead.
I don't get paid a salary, but I do like to go by private plane because it saves a lot of time and is very efficient.
Despite significant challenges within the retail sector in the UK and beyond, which have resulted in many retailers failing, Sports Direct has continued to perform well and exceed market expectations.
On a scale out of five, with one being very bad and five being very good, House of Fraser is a one.
Kevin Keegan is an outstanding individual and also did his best. It wasn't always easy for Kevin at the football club. We didn't have the structure around that we should have had to support him. I will take responsibility for that.
I'm not sitting in my office stroking a white cat... I find it very frustrating: what benefit have I got of closing stores?
It is blatantly apparent that true entrepreneurs will never be accepted in the public arena.
I didn't know Alan Pardew before football at all.
I like to get drunk, I'm a power drinker.
I take business decisions all day every day, from home, from the bath. — © Mike Ashley
I take business decisions all day every day, from home, from the bath.
I will go to the ends of the earth to save as many Debenhams stores and jobs as I can, similar to the promise I made with regards to House of Fraser.
I'm not this crazy capitalist everybody thinks I am.
The over-riding reality is that I am just not wealthy enough to own Newcastle.
It is very boring and lonely in Shirebrook. You know what we do after work? We go to the pub after work.
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