The shock fee Mike Ashley thought might win Sheffield Wednesday takeover race | OneFootball

The collapse of James Bord's bid reopened the race to buy Sheffield Wednesday, but Mike Ashley's bid raises questions over his seriousness over it.

The collapse of the preferred bid for Sheffield Wednesday has reopened the race to buy the financially-stricken Championship club, but Mike Ashley's bid raises questions about how serious he was about it all in the first place.

2026 has been a calamity for Sheffield Wednesday, both on and off the pitch. In the Championship, a relegation which seemed pretty much decided by the 18-point deduction applied to them by the EFL was confirmed before the end of February. It's the earliest relegation recorded in the 138-year history of the EFL, and it remains a grim possibility that they could yet end the season as the first club in the League's history to end a full league season on a negative points tally.

Off the pitch, meanwhile, things haven't gone any better. Last year at least ended with the prospect of a brighter future for the club. It was announced on Christmas Eve that a consortium fronted by the professional gambler James Bord had been picked by the club's administrators Begbie's Traynor as the preferred bidder, and their bid was understood to be sufficiently big to negate any concerns about the club being potentially docked a further 15 points because it met the threshold of paying the club's creditors 25p in the pound, as per EFL regulations.

But as January wore on, it started to feel as though something was off with this bid. Two of the three people at the centre of it made their money from the gambling industry, and while they claimed that the money was coming from other investments, it became clear that, with an Independent Football Regulator due to take over the oversight of such sales, the EFL were dotting their i's and crossing their t's with regard to ensuring that this was indeed the case. At the end of February, the Bord bid collapsed and everyone was back to square one, with time running out before the end of the season.

Mike Ashley has dramatically underbid with his second attempt to buy Sheffield Wednesday

The former Newcastle United owner Mike Ashley's potential interest in buying Sheffield Wednesday had been common knowledge for some time. He'd bid a reported £20 million for the club to the administrators, an amount which was blown out the water by the Bord consortium's initially successful £47.8 million bid. A non-refundable 10% deposit even gave the administrators operating capital for the club which has served them well.

But two posts to the social media platform X within a couple of hours of each other on Wednesday morning (the 10th January) indicated that Ashley's bid for Sheffield Wednesday had again fallen short. In the first place, BBC journalist Andy Giddings reported that, "Understand reports suggesting Mike Ashley has been outbid in his attempts to buy Sheffield Wednesday are correct."

And this was followed up by a second Tweet sent less than a couple of hours later, this time by Alan Biggs, confirming that Ashley's second bid for the club had been for, "£10m or little above", around half what he is understood to have bid towards the end of 2025. Biggs shared the puzzlement of many Wednesday fans over the paucity of this bid, saying that, "he’s known what it’d take to be sure of buying it."

Mike Ashley's low Sheffield Wednesday valuation raises questions over the seriousness of his bid

Ashley has not said anything about why his bid for the club was so low, and it is perplexing for a couple of different reasons. Firstly, it's half what he offered in the latter stages of last year, and while he might argue that this is because of the amount that needs to be spent on the club to get them back on their feet, it remains difficult to square this with Sheffield Wednesday being 'worth' half what they were just three months ago, especially when we factor in that any new owner would be acquiring their stadium at the same time.

And secondly, Ashley presumably already knew that he wasn't alone in this race to buy the club at the second time of asking. The Storch Family's interest in buying the club has been similarly high-profile to Ashley's for a while, too. The statement that they issued upon Wednesday's relegation to League One was widely interpreted as a continuation of their interest in buying the club.

All of this raises the question of why Ashley made a bid which he presumably knew would be too low to satisfy anybody. According to reporting in the Sheffield Star, "Around £10m is required in order to pay the money owed to New Avenue Project Ltd (£7.5m) and football creditors (£2.6m) in order to keep ownership of Hillsborough Stadium and obtain the ‘Golden Share’ from the English Football League", while, "Another £3.9m is set to be paid as the administrators’ fees."

It may well be that all concerned are now reconciled to the fact that Sheffield Wednesday are going to receive a 15-point deduction from the EFL ahead of their League One season in 2026-27 come what may, but this doesn't explain why Ashley would submit a bid that would be so comfortably outbid by the Storch Family. It's been suggested that no-one wants to pay former owner Dejphon Chansiri what he's owed as an unsecured creditor of the club, but this doesn't explain why Ashley would bid so low when another group was waiting in the wings.

If Mike Ashley is out of this race once and for all, there may be some Sheffield Wednesday fans who will breathe a sigh of relief. After all, Ashley's previous involvement in football ended in protests against him at Newcastle United and Rangers, while he hardly enhanced his reputation by serving Coventry City with an eviction notice over a dispute regarding the terms of the club's tenancy at The CBS Arena, either.

It may well be that Ashley was just chancing his arm with this bid in the hope that no-one else would and that he'd pick up the club for a song by default. Sheffield Wednesday fans, meanwhile, can only continue to watch and wait on the sidelines, hoping amongst hopes that a way can be found to finally get the club out of administration which doesn't sanction them still further next season, though the likelihood of this is considerably lower than it looked at the start of this year.