Mike Ashley’s opening offer for Sheffield Wednesday is over £10m short of top bids for EFL club

Former Newcastle owner Mike Ashley’s opening offer of £20million to buy Sheffield Wednesday has failed.

In the first round of bidding, Ashley is offering significantly less than his rivals with the top three bids said to have put down offers in excess of £30m.

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However, the 61-year-old is not out of the race to buy the Championship club with exclusivity for a preferred bidder expected by end of next week.

The Owls were placed into administration in October amid a series of financial issues under the ownership of the unpopular Dejphon Chansiri.

Wednesday owe around £1m in unpaid tax to HMRC and were given a 12-point deduction in the Championship this season.

Football finance expert Stefan Borson told talkSPORT last week that there are 11 bidders interested in taking over the club.

One of those is Ashley, the former CEO of Sports Direct who owned Premier League side Newcastle for 14 years.

He bought the Magpies in 2007 for around £134m but later became an unpopular figure at St. James’ Park.

They were relegated to the Championship two years after his arrival and had their stadium name changed to the Sports Direct Arena.

It drew extensive criticism from the Newcastle fan base, with the club saying St James’ Park was not a ‘commercially attractive’ title.

This change lasted less than a year as the stadium reverted to it’s original name when Wonga.com became the club’s main sponsor.

Newcastle returned to the Premier League under Ashley but suffered another relegation in 2016, although they made another instant return.

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In October 2021, it was announced that the club had been sold to the Saudi Public Investment Fund for £305m.

Sports Direct branding was removed at St. James’ Park shortly afterwards as Newcastle looked to move on from the Ashley era.

What next for Wednesday?

It’s understood that administrators at Wednesday are hopeful of having a preferred bidder by December 5.

The names of all of the bidders are not yet known, but it’s clear that there is plenty of interest in the former Premier League side.

It was reported on Tuesday that COH Sports, who own their bitter city rivals Sheffield United, made an enquiry to buy the club.

However, amid such a fierce rivalry between the two clubs and rules around multi-club ownership involving teams in the same competition, a deal was out of the question.

Another report even suggested a potential merge of the two teams, a move that would send shockwaves across English football.