ON TYNESIDE, THEY are having a rare old time.
St James’ Park is a sell-out, the atmosphere crackles with a raucousness not heard since Bobby Robson was in charge. “We’ve got our club back”, as they sing on the Gallowgate.
Most of all, there is optimism at Newcastle United. During the Mike Ashley years, a fanbase previously mocked for getting giddy at the merest whiff of success became morose, expectation drained by a no-frills, austerity approach while Premier League TV money was banked as books were balanced.
One of the key demands of being a Newcastle fan was loyalty in the face of years in the doldrums but Ashley severely tested that. It got to the point of him having to give away 1,000 season tickets so that his Sports Direct banners would not be emblazoned across empty seats.
But now, Newcastle are back. Only Liverpool and Manchester City have bettered their form since the turn of the year, and Jurgen Klopp’s team travel to Tyneside on Saturday with Newcastle looking among their toughest fixtures in the run-in. The same will go for City when they welcome Eddie Howe’s team on 8 May. Under Howe, they have become a serious proposition, and in Bruno Guimarães, they look to have a player the Premier League’s elite would covet.
There’s a new kid on the block looking to shake things up but don’t expect anyone else to be happy about Newcastle’s revival. Those days in the mid-1990s when the English media regularly described them as everyone’s second-favourite club are long gone.
The club were big spenders back then, too, Alan Shearer’s 1996 £15m transfer smashing the previous record but football, specifically the Premier League, has changed. The source of money is the issue, English football’s thirst for ever more finance bringing in actors with baggage, motives way beyond winning football matches.
With billionaire owners come associations that are uncomfortable, but investors who come into England also know that owning a Premier League club buys an acceptance of sorts, a path into Britain’s political economy as a whole. For a time, Roman Abramovich was part of the fabric of London society, and in Manchester, Abu Dhabi, owners of City, are behind multiple building projects and urban regeneration.
Newcastle’s days under Kevin Keegan represent a lost innocence, a time before English football became the plaything of the geopolitical elite. Newcastle back then were funded by a local tycoon in John Hall, and his associates, a coterie of wealthy local characters.
Not that being owned by local concerns always made for happiness. Newcastle before and after that mid-1990s bounce was always a good example of that. But football changed, and attitudes have now matured. The game is too far gone for it be possible to to look away from where the money came from to pay for Newcastle’s revival. Fans of clubs taken over by foreign oligarchs or in the case of Manchester City and Newcastle, foreign autocrats, must live with the indifference, at best, of others.
Meanwhile, journalists have to deal with the mobilisation of fans against any who dare to raise so much as an eyebrow as to the provenance of the loot that has funded a record £100m (€120m) January transfer window spend.
When, in March, Howe refused to answer questions on the 81 executions that had taken place the previous day in Saudi Arabia, choosing instead to mantra of “I’m going to talk football, that’s all I’m concerned with” the reaction was polarised.
Newcastle supporters and certain local beat reporters leapt to Howe’s defence, with accusations of bias, jealousy and even racism levelled. A few days later, Howe’s next press conference saw him admit “the modern football management scene is to know what’s going on around the world, and I will have to do that”.
In partial mitigation, Howe and Newcastle’s hierarchy, fronted by Amanda Staveley, are new to this game. Both Manchester City and Chelsea employ highly professional PR executives whose job is stay one or two steps ahead of the blowback that comes from the wider affairs of a club’s owner. Meanwhile, beyond corporate PR, such clubs have supporters willing to act as social media foot soldiers.
Anyone questioning the benefactors whose cash injections have allowed them to live out their dreams as football fans will be attacked. Already, the Toon Army appears almost fully mobilised in that regard, those raising issues of human rights, or say the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi or Saudi Arabia’s relations with Russia, have to anticipate a heavy deluge of dissent.
It seems possible that Newcastle’s rise may come at the same time Chelsea descend from prominence. The process to take over Roman Abramovich’s asset, taking a turn on Thursday when the three remaining bidders were asked to find an extra £500m (€596m), has become both torturous and tortuous.
What is known is that a club previously run at a loss, its overspend funded by “loans” from Abramovich, is unlikely to be able to spend so freely. The empty seats seen lately at Stamford Bridge and the imminent departure of Antonio Rudiger, among others, suggest an end of the empire.
Whichever of Chelsea’s suitors wins the bidding will follow the American model that has a mixed level of success in the Premier League. Even Liverpool took significant time for Fenway Sport’s Group to get it right, first taking over in October 2010. And that leaves a vacancy at the top table, with Manchester United floundering, Tottenham and Arsenal both bumping against glass ceilings.
Howe has done a fine football job so far, harnessing the new additions alongside players from the Ashley era, his hard-work ethic winning deserved praise. He has St James’ on his side though there may come a time when making the team attractive to watch and not being Steve Bruce are not quite enough.
These are days to savour. Greater pressures and questions of what “our club” actually means will surely soon follow.
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