Geordies Takeover.

This was our 2nd strip in 1971-2 season.

 

I'd piss mesen if they got relegated this season.

 

Rafa Benitez is out of the game, now they are wanting Brenda Rodgers or Steve Gerard

Managers are getting knocked back faster than the contestants in the squid game.

 

Why they wax lyrical about rafa benitez has always irked me. He's basically the exact same manager as brucie. Their respective records show that. The Geordies are just too thick or too stubborn to see it.
It can only be a mix of hating Bruce and the fact that Benitez called Ashley out a fee times in press conferences. That aside their points totals, league positions and style of football are almost identical.

 

i never tknew that!

 

british made jets
retired british pilots teaching saudi pilots
for every saudi dollar
100 yemeni deaths
for everything else
there's sportswashing

 

No one seemed to care about all the other stuff this PIF has invested in, Boeing, Uber, Wework, Facebook, Citybank, Disney among loads of other household names, fairly sure I heard Starbucks mentioned too. Only when it comes to a football club do the toys get thrown out of the pram.

Edit. As mentioned earlier it looks like the biggest stumbling block was not the human rights issues but the TV rights in the Middle East

 

Bar code fans outside 'SJP' singing "we've got our club back, we've got our club back, ...."
Hmmn. Not the brightest?

 

Riyadh upon Tyne - By Henry Goodwin

Good morning. Newcastle United has just become one of the richest football clubs in the world. After fourteen years under the yolk of Sports Direct mogul Mike Ashley, there’s a new landlord in Toon. The face of the £300 million takeover is Amanda Staveley, a British businesswoman. But the real muscle comes from further afield: the Saudi-backed Public Investment Fund, Riyadh’s sovereign wealth fund, which is overseen by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

The deal was presumed completed last summer until television piracy issues and other little niggles - like the fact that a murderous absolute monarchy with one of the worst human rights records on the planet was trying to launder its reputation by buying one of England’s oldest football clubs - derailed it. The Premier League was apparently concerned that the Saudi state might involve itself in the day-to-day running of a club majority-owned by its state-controlled sovereign wealth fund. Those worries - unfounded, I’m sure - have apparently been assuaged.

Cue delight on Tyneside as long-suffering Geordies - some waving Saudi flags, others dressed in thawbs - cried #cans and set sail for St. James’ Park, tongues wagging at the thought of their club revitalised by exotic new investors with some of the deepest pockets on the planet. Cue disgust, too. For this is nakedly an effort by a reprehensible regime to plaster over its crimes. It is sportswashing, plain and simple. The question is: do Newcastle fans hold a moral obligation to reject it?

At first glance, yes. Mike Ashley was bad, sure. But he never ordered a journalist to be assassinated and dismembered with a bone saw. Sports Direct is tacky and its labour practices tawdry, but it has never bombed Yemeni civilians or locked up dissidents. LGBTQ+ people didn’t risk of being chemically castrated when they stepped into House of Fraser. In short: few would be so bold as to argue that the proprietor of a chain of budget leisurewear shops is as bad as Mohammed bin Salman.

But Newcastle fans could justifiably point to Manchester City - owned by Abu Dhabi petrocrats - or Chelsea - owned by an exiled Russian oligarch - and say: why are we any worse than that lot? Ire is probably better directed not at fans craving a bit of Saturday afternoon joy, but the whole festering system of football ownership. This is a plague pit and nobody’s hands are clean. As Democracy for the Arab World Now - a group founded by Jamal Khashoggi before MBS ordered his murder three years ago - put it yesterday: “English football will sell itself to anyone, no matter how abhorrent their crimes, if they offer up enough money.”

Geopolitics, human rights, war: these are strong currents in a vast ocean. Is the onus on Newcastle fans - instead of, say, governments - to swim against the tide? Probably not. But that doesn't make the unbridled glee of the fanbase any less unsavoury. Supporters' unequivocal embrace of their new Saudi owners has been, if you’ll pardon the pun, black and white. Asked last year whether they would be in favour of the club being bought out by Riyadh, 97 per cent of respondents to a survey by the Newcastle United Supporters Trust said yes. Still more depressing were the responses to Hatice Cengiz - Khashoggi’s widow - when she urged fans to resist the takeover. “Keep your nose out,” one fan replied. “You’re clearly being used by Amnesty as some sick PR move,” another added. No contemplation here, just ‘us’ - earnest football fans - versus ‘them’ - anyone who wants to deny ‘us’ success.

Ultimately, as Jonathan Liew wrote in the New Statesman last year, the city’s unquestioning embrace of its new owners “is merely an admission of where fans sit in the order of things”. Robbed of any influence, they’ve “plumped for the path of least resistance and maximum gratification”. Football clubs - and the absurd economies they now embody - have moved inexorably away from the communities which created them. This was, perhaps, this broken system's inevitable endpoint. Newcastle United, the club of Milburn, Robson and Shearer, a newly-minted jewel in Saudi Arabia's crown - and its fans grinning pawns in an utterly rotten game.

 

Apparently not.

 

Conte touted to replace the big fella.

Had to larf. BT Sports referred to return of 'Newcastle Glory days.'

Geez, did I blink or summat?

 

All the hand wringing over "evil" new owners once a club gets bought does make me want to roll my eyes.

Either you let rich people own clubs or you don't. If you do then accept the consequences.

All this sportswashing is just woke nonsense. Peoples opinion of Saudi Arabia won't change because Newcastle win the Premier League.

 

I think there's a subtle difference between a rich person buying a club and a state-backed institution doing it. If the rich person happened to be a criminal of the worst kind don't you think he would come under extreme scrutiny and probably not be allowed to proceed? Why should a state backing a purchase not be scrutinised similarly?

 

So use the Swedish model and make it a stipulation that 51% is always owned by the fans. Stop anyone owning clubs.

 

Same as the German model isn't it? I'd go along with that.

 

Sponsored by Brown ale..Celebrating with Scottish piss water(Tennents Lager)

 

I think so but I know less about German football. Anyway it works really well here. The atmosphere at Allsvenska games is lightyears ahead of the Premier League. Mind you the quality obviously isn't

 

Those women are unsuitably dressed. They'll have to cover up if they're even allowed into the ground...