MIKE Ashley has sometimes left analysts scratching their heads over his prolific investment activity.

While many of the stakes the retailer has built up make logical sense, with brands such as Dunlop and Slazenger being obviously complementary to his core sports retailing business, others have led to some befuddlement in the City. Of the latter, the move this year to acquire lingerie retailer Agent Provocateur was perhaps the most puzzling.

Few are likely to question, however, the rationale behind his decision to invest in Goals Soccer Centres.

As Nicholas Hyatt of stockbroker Hargreaves Lansdown noted yesterday, the link between Goals and Sports Direct is obvious, with the retailer purveying precisely the kind of kit amateur footballers will don as they take to five-a-side football pitches across the country.

Ashley, through Sports Direct, has been an investor in East Kilbride-based Goals, for two years.

But he upped that stake last week – and it is no coincidence that it has come with Goals suddenly finding a bit more spring in its step.

Goals made a heavy loss in its 2015 last year. But it bounced back on the strength of a sweeping turnaround programme, the fruits of which began to be yielded when it returned to the black in 2016. Now it stands on the verge of significant expansion in the US – a market it has long said offers massive potential – thanks to what could be a game-changing partnership with Manchester City’s cash-rich, Abu Dhabi-based owners.

City Football Group has already pledged to commit £16 billion to help Goals fulfil its expansion plans in the US, allowing it to build its portfolio across the Atlantic much more rapidly than would otherwise have been the case.

The association with Manchester City, whose many star names include the Argentine striker Sergio Aguero and Belgian midfielder Kevin De Bruyne, is unlikely to Goals any harm either.

Ashley knows full well the potential that such a big sports market as the US has to offer, having acquired 50 stores across the Pond himself earlier this year.

It would be no surprise should be expand his empire in the US further in the months ahead – be it by snapping up more stores or hiking its stake in Goals further still.