Unbelievable

For the record, I am most definitely not. I dislike that we are owned by (the public investment fund of) a regime with political views very detached from my own, but I live in a country where the governnment for the last 20 years has also not represented my political views, and seeing as I don’t see football as purely politics, I happen to support NUFC and there’s not much I can do to change the political landscape in SA I’m going to have to shrug off that questionable identity part of the ownership. in terms of their actions, there is plenty to be critical of: - a lack of communication with respect to the ambition reset last year (Yasir should have done another interview with the club channel imo) - a lack of communication with respect to stadium and training ground developments - getting two DoF hires wrong, casting uncertainty over the viability of the role in relationship to Eddie Howe in particular (who is managing who?) - a lack of public and legal challenging of the FFP rules. I understand that they want to adhere to the rules in place, but not that we’re not making more fuss about the morality and legality of it all. However, set against the backdrop of where we were before the takeover, and the incredible results on and off the pitch since their arrival, I’d still give them a solid 8/10 and I highly doubt that if you’d offered Newcastle fans of five years ago a glimpse into the future, many would not be able to focus on the positives and instead nag incessantly about perceived relatively minor misgivings. Realistically, who could have come in and done a better job?

You keep referring to that statement by Silverstone 11 months ago completely oblivious to, or purposefully ignoring the fact he also said this in the very same interview: "Every sponsorship deal takes time. It's about two businesses, two brands coming together and partnering and they don't just fall from trees. Our job is to make sure we now maximise the value and the future value of Newcastle United. We don't want to do deals at value now, where in one to two years when we get closer to our ambitions are undervalued. "It's a fine balance but we need to find the right partners at the right value and other clubs are trying to do the same. It's a really competitive landscape." They have a strategy and it’s been proven to work so far. Why not, I don’t know, trust them unless and until they’ve actually failed to meet their own stated targets?

I’m not panicking over potential short term setbacks without even knowing what is happening behind the scenes. What I do know, as should you, and all that really matters in the end as far as this topic is concerned, is that so far every season the commercial team has overachieved on their very ambitious 30% yearly growth target. So as far as I am concerned they’ve earned our trust as opposed to (y)our scrutiny. These are people who know what they are doing.

My faith is not blind though. Commercial revenue has risen over 40% year on year since they came in…

So basically what you’re saying is you know better than the club despite admitting at the same time you know nothing about these things? How about allowing them some leeway and trust for all the great decisions they’ve made and fantastic progress they’ve already brought us so far? Unless you believe they are somehow deliberately sabotaging the club? To me it seems fairly obvious that they are attempting to bring in outside sponsorship that represents fair value for where they want the club to be, i.e. competing for Europe, cups and in time titles. Underselling yourself for a quick buck Ashley style (Wonga and Fun88 anyone?) can have long term repercussions, the very effects we are still feeling today.

So which sponsors that would have moved the needle have we turned down or missed out on?

A signing!

Don’t know why everybody is up in arms about this conversation. Agree with pretty much everything that was said from either side, except for them rating Guehi as England’s best center back.

Just read the news. Wow… It can all be over in an instant no matter who you are. RIP Diogo Jota

That’s because you lack vision, belief and an understanding of the effect of momentum and compound interest, not because there is a fundamental flaw in our owners’ approach, which let’s be honest, is severely restricted by outside influence.

Forget what Amanda said. That was literally on day one, she was even being cautious and most importantly, within a matter of days the “big six” moved to vote massive obstacles in place to hinder any fast tracking we might have planned. Earlier this year a revised ambition was announced (indirectly) to “compete for silverware every season, regularly play in the Champions League and eventually compete for the Premier League title.” and to “establish Newcastle as a powerful force in English and European football” by 2030. Does that seem so far-fetched? Certainly by then we’ll be well on our way to closing the income gap, having a higher capacity stadium, a better training ground and, depending on transfer dealings, more room in transfer fees and wages. Like it or not that may require sometimes selling a prized asset at peak value. If we continue as we are doing since the takeover we’ll get there. It may be before or a few years after 2030, but we’ll do it and when we’ve done it nobody will be able to say it was only because the “richest owners in the world” threw unlimited funds at it. And for that I’ll be all the more happy.

2030. What makes you think that is not achievable? We’re already consistently competing for CL, we’re growing faster commercially than every one of our competitors. The step up is considerable, but it’s hardly the stuff of fairy tales.

By which metric are we not on course?

So she did. Five to ten years and we are four years in. I don’t know why it would be unrealistic to aim to challenge for titles within the next 6 years. That is certainly the way we are trending.

I presume you are aware of the situation either way respect to PSR, and the re-stated ambition of earlier this year? Seems a bit senseless to act as if there are no restrictions put in place and not take note of developments that have affected plans after ambitions were originally expressed. Not that your “quote” is even correct for at the time by the way, but even if it was, we are competing at the sharp end of the PL, are challenging for trophies and are gaining a foothold in Europe’s major club competition, so quite why you see it all as some massive failure is beyond me.

Absolutely spot on. I can only hope that fans of other clubs don’t check out this thread regularly and mock the entitlement that we used to claim was a myth when the likes of Pardew and Bruce would hide behind it, claiming our expectations were unrealistic. For what these owners have achieved so far they deserve enormous praise. They’re not perfect, but not many could have taken over the living corpse that was NUFC after 14 years of Ashley leaching and achieve what has been achieved. For anybody to question them and demand better is laughable and severely lacking any kind of critical, realistic thinking.

Here’s my reading: where does this entitled expectation come from that the owner of a football club needs to sponsor said football club to the hilt in order to have it compete at a level it otherwise could not? Any sponsorship money PIF pour in through related parties should be received by fans as a favour, not as the very minimum any owner is expected to do. This is true for other football club owners, so why not by consequence also for PIF? Ultimately it is their investment and it is in their and our interest as fans that the club can be self supporting long after they are gone.

Huh? Surely if they are slow it’s because there’s multiple layers of management signoff needed, etc. I.e. a rigid process regardless of urgency or circumstance, for better or worse.

Then what..?

Spot on. We’re also seemingly (more or less) exclusively after players who have stood out at PL level and so competing wilfully against other strong PL clubs. The players in question may also hold out for better offers financially and with more successful clubs. We’re obviously doing this by choice. Hopefully we have a plan B when all/most the players we wanted have gone elsewhere or their clubs are not willing to deal on reasonable terms.

Speculation, but even if so that would be a stupid decision. We can’t afford to forego top talent going for reasonable fees because they want an out in case things don’t work out and a bigger club comes calling. In Dean Huijsen’s case Bournemouth had a very good defender in their ranks and tripled their money inside a year. It was definitely a gamble worth taking at the time. Besides, what’s to say such players don’t come to appreciate our club and may stay for years. After all, we’re a club going places and a great place to play football at the moment. If he’d come here and with us qualifying for CL and winning a cup, there’d be every chance he’d be willing to stay on and perhaps even renegotiate terms. We’d be handicapping ourselves massively if we would insist that players can’t have release clauses.

Who?

I disagree in the sense that I believe we CAN afford to gamble, and therefore I think we should. Our first team is good enough to challenge for top four (evidently since it has done for 3 years) and even much maligned players like Murphy and Burn are worthy first team players who can’t be easily displaced. Then there are players who have had a relatively bad season (Willock, Longstaff, Gordon) who if they stay could improve us if they play to their potential. We have some decent money to play with this summer (let’s assume 100-120m before sales) and we mainly need to strengthen our numbers, although a true injection of quality in some areas wouldn’t go amiss. i therefore personally would prefer us to spend on unproven young players with a high ceiling rather than spend double on proven non-top players with PL experience. Ger Bayayoko instead of Elanga and spend the remaining 30m on midfield cover for example. Likewise I spent much of last summer advocating picking up Huijsen for the reported 15m over chasing Guehi for over four times the money. Most of our first team players are perfectly dependable and we can afford to “gamble” on Lewis Hall like project players who will see us with top players in their mid 20’s or saleable assets in a fee years time, instead of players in their late twenties that we need to be looking to replace sooner or later. We need to bring the average age of the squad down and we need to pad the squad out in multiple positions, so going for “proven expensive” might be a gamble in itself as it might leave us short in numbers still.