We can feel it. We can taste it. It is here. The end of Ashley at Newcastle United. He’s going to be pleased with himself. He’s sat on a club for 14 years, cut it to the bone and now he’s walking away with tens of millions in profit. Perhaps more. Galling.
But it’s not about him. It’s not about those years in the wilderness. It’s now about Newcastle United. A club we hope, we pray is one with a future. The Newcastle United that truly can, at last begin to fulfil its vast potential and then some.
Is Newcastle United about to become one that is deserving of our support? The devotion and dedication that has been undeserved for so long, a club that has brought disappointment, failure for so long to so many.
What happens next … the club of the North? The club of the Tweed to the Tees? Or beyond?
A club that will proudly represent a forgotten, ridiculed, insulted, patronised far corner of the UK … too far north, too removed from the metropolis, stereotyped, dismissed, forgotten. Is that about to change? Is Geordie now here to be respected? I’ll stop now before I burst into the Jarrow Song.
Me, @emil_franchi & Michael Martin hosting the podcast we thought we’d never host #nufc https://t.co/REihCEMY2V
— Alex Hurst (@tfalex1892) October 6, 2021
We are all consuming the news feeds hungrily. We are falling, madly on every snippet, every press release, we are hoovering up information like never before. Keegan signing in ‘82, Shearer coming home in ’96 … this feels bigger than those special moments even. This feels defining, transformative and revolutionary.
These are all of the things we have told ourselves but while the clamour is deafening, we will have to prepare to listen and learn.
What is going to happen to our club?
It so needs change. Money is a big part of that and big investments will have to be made at every level of the club’s operation – the first team squad, St James’ Park, The Academy and the training facilities. Real capital investment has to be made. The club has been neglected for a decade and a half.
But there are key appointments waiting to be made with people. People will transform Newcastle United and they need to be the best and they need to bring in a new culture. They need to be proper people, with good career backgrounds, unimpeachable CVs who operate to the highest standards.
A culture rooted in complete professionalism. People need to be the best we can get for their jobs. From the dug-out to the boardroom to the ticket office to the media operations and the turnstile. The best doing their best. Operating to the highest standards. Sorry, that all sounds like a corporate mission statement.
Newcastle United needs a step change where professionalism is at the core. I don’t want to disfigure this piece with recrimination but there are people who need to leave Newcastle United at the earliest possible opportunity.
A new broom. A blank sheet.
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— True Faith: Newcastle United Fanzine and Podcast (@tfNUFC) October 5, 2021
A new team from the boardroom down with a new vision and on message with a completely new strategy with everyone pulling together.
Let’s also not forget who we are.
We are Newcastle United. We are the club in NE1, on Barrack Road and a Geordie club. We are the club of Veitch, Gallacher, Milburn, Harvey, Mitchell, Moncur, Macdonald, Keegan, Shearer, the Leazes, the Gallowgate and Black & White stripes, black shorts, black socks and the Blaydon Races. That’s not our famous sentimentality. That is our core.
Newcastle United is ours. It is the club of the people of Tyneside. The club supported by miners and shipyard workers from its inception in 1892 and every generation since. The club that binds, that frustrates but that is loved.
It is the club for the city, the Tyneside sprawl and its hinterland in Northumberland and Durham. It is the club of Denton and Darras Hall. It is the club of the growing diverse communities of Tyneside and of those who trace their roots back hundreds of years in these parts. It is the club of men, women, boys, girls, every shade, every religion, every shape and size. All different, all equal.
That includes the people who have misgivings about this takeover and some of our friends we share this club with have legitimate concerns that should not be dismissed. Some of us, me included have made accommodations with who the new owners are and it can make us uncomfortable.
It serves us ill to dismiss or insult those friends of ours, no matter how small in number they are. Our conscience is our strength not our flaw.
But Newcastle United and its supporters cannot be the moral conscience of the nation no matter how much we will be petitioned to play that role.
Our new era needs to cross a bridge between that old, precious identity to the new where we welcome a partnership with new people and embroider that into the fabric of our club. But we also need to recognise some of our number will struggle to make that journey as readily as others. They remain part of us.
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— True Faith: Newcastle United Fanzine and Podcast (@tfNUFC) October 5, 2021
Overall though, there is a Geordie welcome and then some.
We are outward looking, international and receptive to change but also fiercely proud of who and what we are. It is our club. Always will be whatever comes next and it is to be hoped its traditions and identity are respected. We hope all of that is loved by the people who will now have responsibility for the stewardship of Newcastle United. We are here to embrace new friends.
But it feels like that step-change is now.
It will dawn on some people quicker than others what the scale of this change represents. We will also need to be mindful not to feed our own expectations too flamboyantly.
What is the plan?
The new owners have the resources to compete with any club on the planet and then some. But they have picked Newcastle United for a reason and I suspect it is because of our potential and capacity for growth. Any club can be the welcome recipient of riches lavished upon it as per PSG, Man City, Chelsea etc.
Personally, I suspect we may follow a model more like Leicester City than Manchester City but what do I know? I’m ready to listen.
Let’s see and let’s allow whoever it is who is going to be front and centre of Newcastle United the space to breathe, to explain and for us to listen and reflect and respond.
Back to that new culture.
Not everything at Newcastle United is terrible. Our support is the best – passionate, engaged, funny, resilient and ready. The nonsense and trash-talking of social media isn’t important. It doesn’t matter. In the real world it doesn’t register and it is barely the sound of distant traffic. Forget it.
Our support sustains the Newcastle United Foundation, is the core of the Sir Bobby Robson Foundation, the Newcastle United Fans Foodbank, United With Pride, Gallowgate-Wor Flags and of course the Newcastle United Supporters Trust.
Join us in producing the very best in fan led independent media for the best supporters on the planet bar none – all welcome – https://t.co/4b3s4UJFRd #NUFC
— True Faith: Newcastle United Fanzine and Podcast (@tfNUFC) October 5, 2021
All need a relationship with the new club.
But partnerships will go much further and become far more strategic. The club needs a new relationship with its city and the wider community. The city council is pivotal as are the local authorities of Tyneside and the wider NE. As well as the Universities, MPs and the business community.
Newcastle United needs to reconnect with its communities like never before because for fourteen years it has estranged itself from the people it owes its existence to.
As has been hinted, this new ownership has suggested at wider regeneration for the NE.
But what does that mean?
There have to be opportunities for NE businesses in Saudi Arabia and the wider Middle East. This has the opportunity to be transformational but this is where we need the detail also.
Again, wait and see.
But Newcastle United is a community football club. It didn’t choose that character but it has it. It belongs to supporters and I think we’re all yearning to see an end to all of the pain and turn a new page, write a new chapter … perhaps a new book.
It is significant that already the people who have felt unable to support an Ashley-owned Newcastle United are coming home and want to be back amongst friends. It feels like things could heal amongst our support often made toxic by Ashley’s running of Newcastle United FC.
I suspect the world’s media may be making their way to NE1 right now. Newcastle United could be about to be catapulted into global news feeds.
Mike Ashley is over.
The new ownership will be judged on what it does and not what it says. We’ve heard all of the patter merchants down the years, the undelivered promises and all of that shite.
This is all about delivery. What these new stewards of our club can offer for supporters because without that, it is a complete waste of time.
But for now … #Cans Ya Beauty!
Keep On, Keepin’ On …
MICHAEL MARTIN
In the words of The Clash ‘Rock The Casbah, Rock The Casbah’
With a big apology to Pop Will Eat Itself
Cans U dig it
Okay let’s get to it lads & lasses
We like the Strawberry, we like the Trent House Too!
We like the Black Bull, we like Rosie’s Bar Too!
PIF yeah cans U dig it
We dig Staveley we dig the PCP
We dig the Reuben Brothers and Mehrdad Ghodoussi
We dig Liam Kennedy and Steve Wraith, we dig Alex Hurst & True Faith,
We dig The Gallowgate Corner and The Leazes End
(Cans U dig it?)
Ashley auf weidersehn,
Kevin Keegan, “Make my day, ”
Champions League, hit the north,
Alan Shearer knows the score,
Beers? Yeah! Cans U dig it?
Beers? Yeah! Cans U dig it?
We dig wor flags and not fun88,
We dig “Bruce getting the sack” and pints in the Gate
Warren Barton and Rob Lee, “The NUFC”,
Getting to Wembley and not getting home for tea.
(Cans U dig it?)
We like the Percy, we like bar loco too.. hey!
We like the Hotspur, we like Newcastle Arms too!
For me it will always be the club this ‘kid’ went to watch on a Saturday afternoon in 1979 with his dad and his uncle and was hooked from then on by the roar and the passion. I can’t wait to feel it again… but for now absolutely and totally this
“It is the club for the city, the Tyneside sprawl and its hinterland in Northumberland and Durham. It is the club of Denton and Darras Hall. It is the club of the growing diverse communities of Tyneside and of those who trace their roots back hundreds of years in these parts. It is the club of men, women, boys, girls, every shade, every religion, every shape and size. All different, all equal.”
I don’t subscribe to the sports washing claim. KSA are reaching out to the rest of the globe as their future economy depends on it. In order to do this they need to embrace change. They have seen what has happened to the UAE by embracing a more western approach without compromising their values. Change is good and if our ‘wee’ club in the NE can help facilitate it then its got to be a positive.
Today is not the end, it is the end of a beginning. Now the real work comes, the real challenges and expectations from Amanda, the Reubens and the Saudi’s. The last 18 months have been nothing but the prologue.
I am hopeful they can do many things for our club, for the city of Newcastle. But we shall keep watch, we shall critique where needed. Raise concerns and our voice if needed. We shall raise our flags at every game, support our players, manager.
I hope that the next decade brings us more than the last 14 years have brought.
Hope, but eternal vigilance for our club.
The eloquence, dignity and respectful words of Amanda Staveley today brought tears to my eyes, such was the contrast with the last 14 years.
It’s a testament to the man whose name we should never utter again that questions of morality counted for little today. All that mattered was that he has gone and NUFC is a football club again. As for tomorrow…
As individuals we can’t ignore SA’s human rights record, but football supporters can’t be the bastions of the nation’s morality when the nation turns a blind eye to the exploitation and injustice that underpins so much of our materialistic world.
Football has always been about escaping from reality and when Saturday comes we are football supporters not saints – our conflicting world views set aside, united in support of our club.
After a decade and a half of purgatory it’s time to enjoy being a NUFC supporter again, not tear ourselves apart over of complex ethical / political dilemmas we have no control over
What an outstanding article Michael. Thank you for capturing my thoughts so eloquently and then some. I have reservations about the Saudis but to be rid of Ashley and the potential that unleashes is a thing of beauty.
It’s our club, it always was. Now it may become the thing we dreamt of as kids
Nailed it again Michael. Strange feeling, never been quite as wottued about my own expectations in 55 years if support. United supporters will never
be defeated – MagJohnStuttgart
Hopefully all the people who raise concerns over the genuine human rights issues will raise the same concerns with all commercial outlets who sell products made by the genocidal oppressors of the Uigher and Tibetan people, the Palestinians, it may help also to register disapproval with the UK government for selling weapons to oppressive regimes like U.S. India as well as states in the Gulf.