Former Tottenham man and current Manchester City defender, Kyle Walker, has reportedly turned to Neil ‘nicking a living’ Ashton to help with his PR after a string of stories has seen him disciplined by City and reportedly dropped by England for good.
According to a report in Monday’s Daily Mail, “It has not been the best of lockdowns for Kyle Walker.
“The Manchester City defender was the subject of a club investigation after he held a party at his home with two escorts. That story led to another which claimed unimpressed England manager Gareth Southgate had no intention of picking Walker for the Three Lions again.
“Sources have disclosed that the 29-year-old has now turned to former journalist Neil Ashton in an attempt to improve his image. PR adviser Ashton, formerly of this parish, counts Manchester United as his biggest client and has now broadened his portfolio across the city.”
Neil Ashton is, of course, more famous amongt Arsenal fans for being the ‘journalist’ who claimed Mesut Ozil was ‘nicking a living,’ a comment he has never been allowed to forget, nor should he.
The comment was made in 2014 after Mesut Ozil had put in what many claimed to be a ‘poor’ effort against Bayern Munich, even after it transpired that he’d been subbed off after injuring his hamstring with just two minutes on the clock.
That didn’t stop Ashton at the time.
Mesut Ozil may have cost £42.5m, but you wouldn't pay two-bob for him, says @neilashton_ http://t.co/lbf4GQTaLA
— MailOnline Sport (@MailSport) March 11, 2014
To be fair to Ashton, and that’s not something I like to do that often because he’s rarely fair to others and is a prick of the highest order, he did acknowledge he should have just kept his mouth shut about Ozil.
Ashton no longer works for the Daily Mail and now runs the Ashton Media Group which bills itself as a ‘media, brand and image consultancy, to the most valuable and biggest personalities in the world…’
As noted above, Walker is his biggest client.
Ashton’s inside knowledge of how trash rags like the Daily Mail assassinate people on their pages will no doubt be invaluable to his clients, but I can’t resist pointing out how he is now ‘nicking a living’ off the back of the trouble his former industry causes in the first place.
His website has one page, 19 words, and an email link.