Since Newcastle United got taken over, it’s become pretty clear that our owners want to modernise and change major aspects of the club.
Whether it be the club’s badge, the stadium or the naming rights to said stadium, it appears the club wants to do everything in its power to increase branding and profitability. For the most part, I’ve always been against it.
I love St James Park, and I love the current badge. I also love the working-class nature of our club and city, and don’t want our stadium to be turned into an 80,000 seater concert hall with wine tasting stations across the ground. As this agonising transfer window persists, I find myself caring less and less about maintaining these values out of sheer desperation for us to be able to compete.
We’re living in a system built to confine us, as things stand. Almost every player we have attempted to sign thus far has shunned us for a spot in a big 6 side, and it’s largely understandable.
These clubs can invest heavily year on year, and most importantly can shill out wages to their squad players that we can’t to our world class stars. Hugo Ekitike is set to earn over £13 million a year Liverpool, a wage near double that of our highest earner in the just over £8 million a year earned by our captain Bruno Guimaraes. We never stood a chance.
I understand fully why the club feels the need to make such drastic changes to our clubs culture and foundation in order to compete. However, I can’t stand the fact we will have to do it, and it’s something the Premier League really, really needs to consider when they consider the rule system that eventually replaces PSR.
Forget for now the fact that PSR protects the status quo of the big 6, as we all know it does, it also forces and encourages clubs to extort their fans to the best of their abilities. Ticket prices have increased year on year since the takeover, as have the costs of memberships, kits and merchandise.
Regular working class fans are getting further and further priced out of the sport as we, and every other club in the league, try to gain whatever edge we can in the current PSR climate. The painful irony is that our owners have more than enough funds to give out tickets and kits for free, never taking a penny from the fanbase, and still make Newcastle United the richest club in the world.
I’m not saying that’s how it should be, either. I’m overall glad we don’t have complete financial freedom, as completely buying the league and every other cup imaginable would feel soulless and empty. There still must be rules in place to prevent such things from happening. However, they need to surely adjust these rules to not incentivize unnecessary greed and extortion of the working man to help clubs that are in no financial danger whatsoever in the first place.