Yasir Al-Rumayyan was never shy about his ambitions at Newcastle United. Reports have him telling club executives that the intention was to become “England’s No 1”. The progress has been notable, albeit from the lowest starting point, the apathy and anger of the Mike Ashley era: trophy drought over and Champions League football, twice.
That pursuit of the peak was unsurprising, given Saudi Arabia’s own vast wealth, power and purpose. Newcastle became the richest football club in the world overnight. What the Public Investment Fund (PIF) aims for, it tends to get: clubs, leagues, influence, geopolitical force through sport.
It has been hamstrung by the financial regulations of English football; no doubt. You can believe profitability and sustainability rules (PSR) to be a protectionist racket for the established elite. You can consider them a necessary mechanism to avoid owners loading social institutions with economic burden that leave them facing apocalypse if those owners choose to stop funding. You can sit somewhere in between. You cannot deny that Newcastle’s owners would like to have spent more.
But if PSR offers a reason for frustration, internally and certainly amongst supporters, it is a handy excuse more than a catch-call explanation. This summer has raised serious questions about Newcastle’s place within the PIF sporting nexus. Some supporters are understandably beginning to find the answers unpleasant.
Limitations on spending could have been eased by a stadium sponsorship deal or equivalent for the training ground. The stadium expansion project continues to roll on without a firm answer, while the training ground redevelopment may be completed before the start of next season but that would be half a decade after the takeover. To an outsider, the most obvious method of raising new revenue has been increasing ticket prices.
The Magpies missed out on Chelsea striker Joao Pedro (Photo: Getty)
The behaviour of Alexander Isak has caught most of us off guard; not taking part in a preseason tour to then train at your previous club is a message of outright dissent. Even here, there are accusations of broken promises and a contract situation that had Isak feeling itchy. The Paul Mitchell premiership left scars that may end with the most valuable asset leaving.
The departure of Amanda Staveley and Mehrdad Ghodoussi afforded Mitchell more power, having replaced Dan Ashworth as sporting director. But Mitchell left in May, leaving Eddie Howe with greater responsibility for recruitment. With chief executive Darren Eales stepping down due to illness, there is a power vacuum at St James’Park. Howe’s nephew Andy also has a significant role in recruitment.
This is not how elite football clubs operate, and it shows. So far this summer, Newcastle have targeted a player who would want wages they never intended to match (Bryan Mbeumo), a player who always preferred to stay in the south (Joao Pedro) and a player whose former (more successful) club had a release clause (James Trafford). Time was wasted on all three and all three pursuits were played out in public for supporters to see not work.
The dubious morality of this ownership should never be silenced, even if Howe is still educating himself on them. But the sporting complication of state ownership, and the weird nexuses it creates, also continue to nag. This is where Newcastle are losing out this summer.
PIF is majority owners of Newcastle. It is also majority owners of four Saudi Pro League clubs: Al-Ahli, Al-Ittihad, Al-Hilal, and Al-Nassr. To choose one club: Chelsea have sold players for £100m to Saudi Pro League clubs (and also moved on the wages as a result) and then signed Pedro for £60m, beating Newcastle to that purchase.
To choose another club: Liverpool have sold players to PIF-owned clubs in Saudi Arabia and Darwin Nunez may be next. Liverpool also want to sign Isak and that deal will be made easier by Nunez’s departure. Isak is reportedly Al-Rumayyan’s favourite player who he could not countenance selling, but Saudi money is making a sale more likely. None of this makes sense and all of it is messy.
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To that we must add the Club World Cup, for which PIF helped to fund the prize money through its investment in Dazn (who became the official Fifa broadcasters). Winning the final made Chelsea a reported £85m that they could use to help fund their summer purchases. Again, PIF has helped them.
None of this should come as any surprise. Saudi Arabia’s wealth, and propensity for spending that wealth on global sport, is unprecedented. When they are not building stadiums (and an entire city) for a World Cup, they are funding an attempted growth league to rival established European nations or gaining influence in international governing bodies. Newcastle is only a cog within a machine. Al-Rumayyan is probably a busy bloke taking over golf/tennis/Fifa/the world (delete as appropriate).
But that created more urgent reasons to fill positions of power, influence and strategy during the most challenging summer since your takeover, not less. Otherwise, when your striker gets frustrated and wants to leave, your manager is left firefighting in public and your squad is low on depth ahead of a probable 50-plus game season, supporters are entitled to ask what is happening.
Not creating the structure ahead of this transfer window, given the wealth of the owners and the success of last season, was arguably the most foolish act of any Premier League club this summer. Worse than that, Newcastle’s owners have somehow managed to achieve the unthinkable: disillusioning sections of a fanbase five months after ending a 70-year trophy drought and three months after qualifying for the Champions League again.