On the Tyneside - Livramento, Laughramento, Loveramento

You got a sub by chance? Curious to see if there’s anything they have that others haven’t

 

Do they offer Newcastle ale in #cans?

 

There’s reports claiming today’s progress is because KSA proved they won’t be part of ownership, and not because of the BeIN agreement.

 

#cans

 

Ding dong Ashley’s gone.

 

Forbes used this opener last year when the takeover stuff first started

 

Also, daily mail is saying they’re targeting Graham Potter

 

I don’t really want Conte(now or in future) tbh. He wins but he also seems too willing to up and leave out of nowhere.

 

Be still, my heart

 

Thats what I was referring to earlier. I wouldn’t hate it

 

Would love for this to be true

 

This is spot on, and a good piece of writing

Spoiler

Newcastle United fans may be waking up this morning feeling like they have won the lottery, but if Amanda Staveley’s promises are to be believed then there will be plenty of better moments to come.

Their club will sign better players and a better manager and, soon enough, those supporters will have a team they can enjoy watching again.

Going to games at St James’ Park will have that unmatchable buzz that comes from watching a team on the up, just as there was at Manchester City a decade ago, or Chelsea a few years earlier. The daily experience of being a Newcastle fan, giddily looking forward to each coming match, knowing your team is improving but not by how much, will be incomparable to the long flat stasis of the Mike Ashley years. That old sensation of games and even seasons congealing into one demoralising slog should be gone for some time.

Whether trophies will follow or not, well, only time will tell. Certainly, Newcastle will have a harder job of spending their way to the top than Chelsea and Manchester City did, simply by virtue of trying this after those two clubs have already established themselves among the elite. The Premier League is far more financially stratified than it ever has been before.

But it is still likelier than not that, under these new owners, Newcastle will win something, at some point. And when they do claim the club’s first major trophy since 1955, their fans will certainly feel a deep communal sense of jubilation. St James’ Park will feel like the centre of the football universe.

If only that were the whole story, it could be wrapped up as a heartwarming tale of a long-dormant club throwing off its shackles and delivering hope back to its fans.

But it is not.

The fact is that Newcastle are now a small part of something much bigger, namely the Saudi Arabian state’s attempts to buy credibility, status and popularity in the wider world. And to replace their negative image, one of autocracy, repression, torture and murder, with something more positive.

Saudi Arabia will have seen what its great allies and neighbours in the United Arab Emirates have built at Manchester City — one of the best and most successful football teams of the modern era — and want the same for themselves. (The Premier League insisted when finally approving the Newcastle takeover last week that they had “received legally binding assurances that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia will not control the club”.)

Of course, Newcastle fans did not choose this to happen to their club. They are not accountable for the evils of crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, just as they were not accountable for the callousness of Ashley.

This is the sad fact of modern English football: clubs are passed around between the worst of capitalism and the worst of politics, and what the fans of those clubs think about it all barely registers. Just because the new owners’ sporting ambitions overlap with those of the supporters more than Ashley’s did, it does not follow that the club has been “returned” to the fans in any meaningful sense.

But while the supporters are not responsible for the behaviour of their club’s new owners, they are responsible for what they do themselves in response.

Which is why the waving of the Saudi flag outside St James’ Park on Thursday evening, or the wearing of Bin Salman masks, leaves a bitter taste, much like the “Manchester thanks you Sheikh Mansour” banner at the Etihad Stadium.

The royal families of repressive monarchies are simply not people to be celebrated, no matter how many very good footballers they pay for.

Every football fan knows how strong the tribal impulse is, and how instinctively we close ranks or double down in the face of outside criticism.

So with that said, it is worth repeating what should not be demanded of Newcastle fans.

Not that they should be unhappy to see Ashley leave. Not that they should not look forward to seeing a better Newcastle team emerge in the months and years ahead. Not that they should give up on supporting Newcastle and break the link between themselves, their families and their local community.

The first thing that should be asked of Newcastle fans is that they go into this with their eyes open.

That they know why Saudi Arabia has bought their club (even if, officially, via the nation’s sovereign wealth fund). And know the reality of conditions in Saudi that have necessitated the purchase of a football club thousands of miles away, acting as a PR counterbalance. Plenty has been written about the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the war in Yemen, daily life in Saudi for women, migrants, dissidents and LGBTQ people.

This is the other side of the coin that will be funding the footballers they cheer for.

The next step is harder.

It is one thing to learn about the reality of the Saudi regime, and then just dilute it in enough context to be palatable.

Yes, it is bad, but so are other clubs’ owners. Yes, it is bad, but they invest in Uber and Disney too. Yes, it is bad, but Saudi has been a key ally of the UK for years, buying British arms and, so the argument goes, securing British interests in the region. All of which is true in isolation, but does nothing to answer the question of whether or not this is right. Arguing that the state of the wider world means that all moral bets are off lies somewhere between cynicism and cowardice.

The real challenge is not to compartmentalise this but to integrate it.

Of course, compartmentalising is how we get through life, and it is a natural impulse when it comes to trying to protect the purity of something you love. It would be much easier to seal all this off in a box and get on with enjoying the show on the pitch. But Newcastle fans should still try to hold both issues in their head at the same time.

That is not an easy thing to do — morally, emotionally or intellectually — and it will leave many of those supporters feeling conflicted. But feeling conflicted or ambivalent or torn is simply part of life, even if there is not much of it in football. How fans manifest this conflict is entirely up to them, and ultimately everyone will come to their own accommodation with it.

But you can support a team on the pitch without supporting the club off the pitch. You can be proud of your club and what it means to you and your community without celebrating the people who own it or run it.

This is the balance I have found with my own team, Manchester City.

I grew up supporting them but, having grown increasingly uneasy about the Abu Dhabi ownership, I have not been to a home game as a fan since Manuel Pellegrini was their manager over five years ago.

But if I am watching City, whether at an away match or on TV, naturally I still want them to win. I still take pleasure from their victories and feel frustration at their defeats. I have not had to sever the connection I inherited from my family and share with my friends.

Maybe this is just another act of moral evasion or compartmentalisation, of trying to separate the inseparable. Why else would Pep Guardiola and Kevin De Bruyne be at City if not for the ownership? And I am certainly not proposing it as the right or only solution: it took me years to reach this point, and plenty of fans who feel a similar sort of conflict have decided differently.

For the rest of this season, Newcastle fans will be high on the buzz of optimism and novelty and even a sense of rebirth at their club. But eventually, they will have to wrestle with this; with who owns their club and why, and with who they are celebrating off the pitch as well as on it.

It is not a comfortable thing to confront, because, of course, everyone wants to keep their fairytales pure. But it is better than wilful blindness

 

Apparently there’s talks scheduled with Lampard.

Meh

 

Big fan of the move. Don’t care with their current record, he’s proven to be a successful manager at basically every stop