It’s a celebratory week on Tyneside as the first anniversary of the much-needed, widely-publicised and extremely controversial takeover of Newcastle approaches.
On October 7th 2021 the destiny of our great club was changed forever when the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund (PIF) along with Amanda Staveley and the Reuben Brothers took over the reigns and changed our fortunes for the better almost immediately.
Since the takeover, the main face(s) of the new ownership has been Staveley and her husband Merhdad Godhoussi who are often seen in the stands at the games, as well as in the crowd at Kingston Park for the women’s fixtures and not to mention Merhdad’s Twitter presence.
On Monday, however, the club chairman, Yasir Al-Rumayyan spoke about the club’s future in his native Saudi Arabia where he revealed that there were other options on the table before sealing the deal with Mike Ashley.
Speaking to Radio Eight (via The Chronicle), Al-Rumayyan said:
“Why did we choose the English Premier League? Because it is the greatest league that exists in the world. No other league competes with it. Any team from the 20 can beat the strongest team.
“Before Newcastle we had offers from Italy, France and also the UK. One UK club offered us 30 per cent for £700m and without any management.
“Amanda Staveley brought Newcastle to us and said ‘we like it so much, we would like it to be with you’. The Reuben family came and said ‘we would like to be partners in the investment’. So they have skin in the game.
“We bought the team for £350m, compared to 30 per cent [of the unnamed club] which is £700m. Then you have Chelsea who sold for £3.5bn. So my aim now is to make Newcastle go from £350m to £3.5bn, that’s 10 times the money. If we had bought Chelsea, for example, how much would it bring us in profit?”
“Newcastle United is the only club present in one city, meaning there is no bigger club than Newcastle,” he added. “There are one million in the area and they are all present. We have 52,000 seats in the stadium and tickets are always sold out.”
It’s that one line in there that is really exciting: “So my aim now is to make Newcastle go from £350m to £3.5bn” – that highlights the PIF’s vision for the club and drives home the notion that they aren’t here to just have the club ticking over, they will do everything they can to ensure we are mentioned among the biggest and the best clubs going because that makes them money too.
Football is a business, and a very lucrative one at that, so of course the PIF’s vision is driven by profit, they are an investment fund after all, but if their greed leads to our success, then I’m glad we have the greediest (therefore wealthiest) owners in the game.
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IT’S A NAME GAME