This week, Alan Shearer has written a brilliant in-depth piece for [The Athletic](https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5983953/2024/12/11/newcastle-project-stalled-howe/) on all things Newcastle United, covering fears we’ve gone stale, issues on and off the pitch and Eddie Howe’s position at the club.
It’s a great read and well worth a few minutes of your time, but one section worth picking out features his message to the Saudi ownership at St James’ Park, where he asks five key questions.
The legendary goal scorer was unafraid to bring up concerns around the current regime, and put forward in no uncertain terms the questions on the lips of fans.
Sheared wrote: _‘To suggest nothing has changed would be ludicrous and wholly false, but the adrenaline rush has given way to a hangover.’_
_‘There are legitimate questions to be asked and how about these for starters: **What’s happening with the chief executive? What’s happening with the stadium? What’s happening with the training ground? What’s happening with new signings?**_
_‘In turn, Newcastle would have some legitimate answers, like due process, not rushing huge decisions and the millstone of profit and sustainability rules (PSR), but the overall effect feels like drag, delay, an anchor. The big concern is that all of these things are connected. This is the reality of any club’s ecosystem; excuses eat into its culture.’_
Shearer then followed up with a fifth question, asking “who is selling the vision now?” following Amanda Staveley and Mehrdad Ghodoussi’s sudden exits over the summer.
_‘Staveley and Ghodoussi were very present and very visible. They were brilliant at front-of-house stuff, close to Howe and the team and it felt like they brought a drive, a vision. Newcastle needed that after the cold, aloof Ashley era._ **_But who is selling the vision now?_** _Is anybody explaining it inside the dressing room, let alone to the rest of us?’_
The key questions put forward by the sheet-metal worker’s son help put into perspective the uncertain times that surround our club.
On the one hand, it’s brilliant to have Shearer on side and it’s easy to forget how lucky we are to have our most prolific ever Premier League player be adept as a spokesperson for the fans. On the other, should it really be up to him to help push the club into action, publicly addressing the ‘hangover’ of the current ownership while being all too well-versed in the poor running of Newcastle United under his former employer Mike Ashley.
It is a strange time to support the club, those vocally pleased with our current ongoings often revered to ‘happy clappers’, but the criticisms of those seeking answers from the club are valid and, as Shearer alluded: the time for excuses is over, the time for answers is now.
The Champions League qualification of 2022/23 felt as though Newcastle and PIF had announced themselves to the big stage, however a series of decisions since have led to the sides’ regression.
_‘More than three years down the line, that progress is less easy to explain,”_ Shearer added as he began to further ponder the club’s situation. _“Newcastle are growing their commercial and marketing departments — they are unrecognisable in that sense — but their footballing story is not so clear._
_‘Players have short careers and the biggest, most ambitious clubs do not go two windows without strengthening. And they do not go two seasons without Europe, which is now a distinct possibility._
_‘There may be perfectly logical reasons for it, but St James’ is largely unchanged and a new training ground remains an aspiration. For this team, for this era of players in the here and now, what does Newcastle’s project actually mean? What are they playing for beyond money, pride, themselves or whatever else? Is this a blip, a brief pause? What does Howe point to right now?’_
Albeit a realistic conclusion of current events, it casts a gloomy shadow over those who entered the piece in The Athletic with a sense of optimism. Worryingly, and unsurprisingly for the man who knows the club better than most, Shearer’s depiction of a club struggling to move in the right direction across the board is an accurate one.