The "delighted Ashley has gone, but uncomfortable with Saudi ownership" thread

[St. Maximin]

42 minutes ago, triggs said:

Sportswashing is about making themselves more open to the rest of the world for commercial reasons moreso than their reputation amongst the general public IMO. Although gaining a significant portion of Newcastle fans as people who are willing to defend them is also handy

Yeah how I see it, so in a sense it’s still about reputation. The way some talk though is as if they’re trying to please us worthy westerners or hoping by buying a club those reports about human rights abuses will just go away.
 

I really don’t think those apologists have much of an impact though - they’re very small in number and if anything are a hindrance when they get noticed on Twitter etc. 

[Darth Crooks]

7 hours ago, elbee909 said:

Is there much evidence of sportswashing really working here? All I ever see is negative stuff highlighted more due to NUFC ownership. Which is absolutely fair enough.

 

 

 

You  literally have a 3rd kid which my own nephew wears flying Saudi colours. I find it quite insidious tbh.

[Kid Icarus]

Just now, Whitley mag said:

Sorry you can’t accuse me of being John Everyman then claim that it’s a basic fact that the NUST vote only was about getting rid of Ashley, it was also clearly badged as approving of the people involved taking over.

 

You again presume that everyone who voted was only interested in getting grid of Ashley at whatever cost. I voted to get rid of Ashley but was also over the moon that people involved would be transformative for the club. Had the vote been around an American hedge fund who we’re going to leverage the club with debt, I might have voted differently.

You have to be on the wind up.  There's no way you read my post about it NOT being about one factor alone, but both, and then fired back with 'you're presuming it's about one factor'

 

I hope for your sake that you're on the wind up or you just misread.

[Darth Crooks]

In the interests of balance I look at Saudi investment in this new green transit mirrors edge city and think why are we  not capable of thinking that way with economies our size and the history of Britain and colonialism is brutal and cruel with global influence.

Still it’s a cruel autocratic regime and any talk of separation is for the birds. Flag kits and money. I don’t have a problem with Saudi people - they share problems of most laymen no doubt. Worse if you are gay etc. I do have issue/ critique of this idea that everyone who has concerns and has the will to express them is automatically of a different competitive agenda. Perhaps should just see how these protests pan out and in what form/voice and go from there.

 

 

Edited November 3, 2022 by Darth Crooks

[Tiresias]

They get to look like normal benevolent sports investors so people look at them more favourably, it makes it more difficult for a UK government to decide to take action such as sanctions against saudi government if they are intertwined with uk economy and cultural life, it's soft power, it doesn't have to work either, they may have improved their standing with a lot of newcastle fans not sure nation wide it has a good event but they are taking long view and assume it will normalize over time. 

 

There is plenty to feel queasy about and as much as people are trying to read benevolent reasons onto it, take some comfort that they are wasting a lot of money on making us successfull and it does not have to work in terms of improving their reputation. 

[Darth Crooks]

In relation to Ashley I think the presentation of their comparison is also skewed. I don’t take the view one is necessarily better than the other as media liked to paint it. They are two sides of the same fucked up exploitative modern football coin - it’s just this time there’s fan recognition and I can see why that resonates when people pay a kings ransom for their hobby. 

 

 

Edited November 3, 2022 by Darth Crooks

[Groundhog63]

The only "Sportswashing" in action I can see is people, previously ambivalent to Geopolitics & state oppression, getting the heebie geebies about people who did & are voicing that concern because it involves the owners of their football team. 

Whilst I've said before it's not the job of NUFC supporters to be the moral compass of football ownership but they are entitled to be twitchy at the very least. 

They have a point. 

Football is fucked tho and has been since Murdoch. The only way any team can compete is by being equally fucked. 

This is what it is. 

At a risk of repeating myself again I also argue that the narrative that "whataboutary" isn't relevant to any arguement is very deliberate. 

What about our Gvt working hand in hand, dealing in arms, trade, Intel etc with any "despotic" regime one can think of. 

Fuck me, the tories are bought and paid for with Russian money. Thatcher had the Taliban in No10. 

May, as Home Sec, had the Manchester bomber and his family shipped over to Lybia for training with the Rebels to defeat Gadaffi then allowed to come and go at will. 

The UK's more than happy to share torture trade and snooping technology with apartheid Israel for eg. 

This kind of whataboutary? 

 

And were supposed to not watch our football? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Darth Crooks]

Sportswashing is a thing that works btw. I mean whether the PIF do it to what end remains to be seen but look at the defense of anbramovic despite being a key oligarch I’m Putins inner circle - that happened to fanfare under everyone’s noses and the ‘romans army’ banners were there til the end. It wasn’t  just in football either.

 

I think it’s naive to think we’re immune from that despite fans not being ultimately in control. I refuse to be wilfully ignorant.

 

 

Edited November 3, 2022 by Darth Crooks

[Darth Crooks]

The problem with whataboutery is that it does deflect to another issue to the point where you no longer focus on any single issue being a problem. It’s a logical fallacy that because lots of stuff is fucked/compromised we shouldn’t care/engage with any of it. That applies to society at large really but that’s for the chat section perhaps.  

Of course we can watch our football - but if you’re going to leap on critics citing hypocrisy when you have a rainbow laces campaign whilst wearing Saudi National colours as a player or fan you’re going to look a bit daft. None of us operate in a vacuum.

 

 

Edited November 3, 2022 by Darth Crooks

[geordiesteve710]

Regardless of anyone's views, we need to let this protest pass off peacefully (so long as that's how it is carried out.) Otherwise we'll all be made to look like a massive bunch of cunts.

[St. Maximin]

46 minutes ago, Darth Crooks said:

Sportswashing is a thing that works btw. I mean whether the PIF do it to what end remains to be seen but look at the defense of anbramovic despite being a key oligarch I’m Putins inner circle - that happened to fanfare under everyone’s noses and the ‘romans army’ banners were there til the end. It wasn’t  just in football either.

 

I think it’s naive to think we’re immune from that despite fans not being ultimately in control. I refuse to be wilfully ignorant.

 

 

 

It certainly happens but the question is more how effective is it? Supporters of a club even the size of Chelsea make up a small minority of football fans in the country, let alone the world, so a small minority of them choosing to be his apologist can't be that effective in the grand scheme of things as the overall reaction to the war here has shown.

 

With regards to Russia, the 2018 WC is an argument it worked because many people were saying it's a great place to visit. That in itself can't be bad - last year I was thinking I'd like to visit at some point and maybe still will, despite the human rights abuses. At the same time the war shows its limitations because I doubt many of the 2018 fans who visited are defending it now. That the war happens to be in Europe and Russia are not one of our allies doesn't help their cause mind.

[TRon]

1 hour ago, Darth Crooks said:

In the interests of balance I look at Saudi investment in this new green transit mirrors edge city and think why are we  not capable of thinking that way with economies our size and the history of Britain and colonialism is brutal and cruel with global influence.

Still it’s a cruel autocratic regime and any talk of separation is for the birds. Flag kits and money. I don’t have a problem with Saudi people - they share problems of most laymen no doubt. Worse if you are gay etc. I do have issue/ critique of this idea that everyone who has concerns and has the will to express them is automatically of a different competitive agenda. Perhaps should just see how these protests pan out and in what form/voice and go from there.

 

 

 

 

I think that's fair enough, but the overriding problem still remains money. It overrides everything including human rights and principle. This is why football, and no doubt most other spheres of life in today's world are where we are today.

[TRon]

1 hour ago, Tiresias said:

They get to look like normal benevolent sports investors so people look at them more favourably, it makes it more difficult for a UK government to decide to take action such as sanctions against saudi government if they are intertwined with uk economy and cultural life, it's soft power, it doesn't have to work either, they may have improved their standing with a lot of newcastle fans not sure nation wide it has a good event but they are taking long view and assume it will normalize over time. 

 

There is plenty to feel queasy about and as much as people are trying to read benevolent reasons onto it, take some comfort that they are wasting a lot of money on making us successfull and it does not have to work in terms of improving their reputation. 

 

It also works the other way. By 'adopting' a western football team, the Saudi public will be exposed to a lot of modern culture and practices that they were blocked from previously. I'm sure there will be plenty of traditionalists over there who are seething at being associated with the west as well.

[Darth Crooks]

8 minutes ago, TRon said:

 

I think that's fair enough, but the overriding problem still remains money. It overrides everything including human rights and principle. This is why football, and no doubt most other spheres of life in today's world are where we are today.

I agree. We’re at a cross roads in it on the basis of all major challenges we face - what cost/price/extent is okay to profit from our heritage, social need, welfare of our planet. It’s a universal problem. Shits going to hit the fan with one or more of these things and football ownership is low down that list. 

 

[Tiresias]

Pretty much agree with everyone above, am skeptical of influence the other way to Saudi Arabia but I could be wrong.

 

There are two very intertwined, but also sometimes confused issues here. 

 

Money and Geopolitical involvement in sport. Just to illustrate distinction, if Saudi Arabia bought us for sportswashing but made no investment whatsoever it still would be wrong. I would also argue, that any nation state no matter their benevolence on the global scale should not buy football clubs to advertise themselves, even if everyone agrees how wonderful they are. To illustrate I think it's handy to think through what a football club is and ought to be, because it's not an advertising board for regimes, but also they aren't truly businesses either. They are too embedded and important to communities. To illustrate this immagine the sentimental community side of football was all bollocks, that it is just a paid piece of entertainment like Game of Thrones, then NUFC would have been cancelled 5 years into the Ashley regime, noone would go. 

 

Football clubs should be run and regulated with that in mind, but they are instead run to maximise profits or to be propaganda outlets. It's obscene. 

 

And then we get on the is it wrong for one club to be much richer than the others. Yes of course it is, a competitive league is absolutely integral to the quality of the league. It is slightly more complicated in that I do understand, the league wants the best players in it, and to get them you need to have more money in the league than other leagues, and we can't run it like a closed shop unless all the leagues accross europe all agreed to the same rules, but the super league idea which would have cemented the same 6 clubs into their position at the top would have killed the league. Clubs that are run really well like Brighton absolutely should have a chance of transfering that competence into challenging for the league and yet there is very very little chance of doing so, or even of getting top 4. Clubs run like Man U or Chelsea that make continuing mistakes or changes of direction but just spend their out of it should be punished. 

 

This is slightly why I am a bit less critical of the current Financial Fair Play rules, which are awful and seem geared to preventing clubs like us competing, they should do a lot more to limit some nonsense elsewhere, but, even if we would have done it this way anyway, I am happy to see us succeed by spending sensibly, buying players with sell on, looking to build academy, all stuff that is what should be done.

 

Unfortunately noone, not the league, not uefa, not the government, not the fa are interested in tackling these issues, because as discussed above, football is not a random tv show that will be cancelled if it is bad, everyone is too invested to take serious action so instead it is ruthlessly exploited to suck money out of it and to make Saudi Arabia look good. I sympathise a lot with a lot of football pundits who are appalled that football allowed us to be bought by saudi arabia, but they sometimes direct their ire at us as if we are the only ones who 'should' be boycotting football, as if that is a reasonable ask. 

 

[Whitley mag]

3 hours ago, Kid Icarus said:

You have to be on the wind up.  There's no way you read my post about it NOT being about one factor alone, but both, and then fired back with 'you're presuming it's about one factor'

 

I hope for your sake that you're on the wind up or you just misread.

I read your post clearly.

 

If you are in favour of the takeover going ahead surely by default you’re accepting Ashley going and PIF becoming majority shareholder no ?

[Kid Icarus]

2 hours ago, Whitley mag said:

I read your post clearly.

 

If you are in favour of the takeover going ahead surely by default you’re accepting Ashley going and PIF becoming majority shareholder no ?

 

Yes, that's the point I'm making to you. That it's both of those things, not just one. Not just Ashley going. Not just the PIF becoming owners. Both of them. 

 

Your reasons for voting in favour of the takeover can be anything from 100% wanting it because you want rid of Ashley and 100% wanting it because you want the new owners, with every option in between.

 

I'd be absolutely floored if there was even a single Newcastle fan whose reason for wanting the takeover was 0% to do with wanting rid of Ashley. 

 

 

Edited November 3, 2022 by Kid Icarus

[tomlynnherrington]

20 hours ago, Kid Icarus said:

Me tbh. I was just saying last week that I'm maxing out at about 75%. I know somethings still missing, part of it's the damage done by Ashley, part of it's our owners.

 

Not everyone's the same.

You may feel different when you’re watching Trippy lifting the Champion’’s League trophy at Wembley in 2024.

[thomas]

Not directed at anyone in this thread at all but I wish the people who spent all their time winding up newcastle fans about it would instead harangue people with actual power - i.e. the govt and fa - who allowed this to happen in the first place. i feel like the online winding up is a consolation prize taken because the govt/fa have repeatedly and resoundingly made clear they don't give a fuck what MBS/KSA get up to as long as the cash/oil keeps flowing. So hey pissing off a geordie feels like a real accomplishment under the circumstances.

[Darth Crooks]

It’s low hanging fruit for sure.

[Whitley mag]

5 hours ago, Kid Icarus said:

 

Yes, that's the point I'm making to you. That it's both of those things, not just one. Not just Ashley going. Not just the PIF becoming owners. Both of them. 

 

Your reasons for voting in favour of the takeover can be anything from 100% wanting it because you want rid of Ashley and 100% wanting it because you want the new owners, with every option in between.

 

I'd be absolutely floored if there was even a single Newcastle fan whose reason for wanting the takeover was 0% to do with wanting rid of Ashley. 

 

 

 

It’s certainly not a leap to draw a conclusion then that though some members may have had concerns about the Saudi’s, ultimately they came to the conclusion that PIF should be allowed to purchase the club no ?

I think it would be quite a stretch to say any of those 97% were vehemently opposed to the Saudis buying the club. 
 

In fact I would say it would be pretty safe to assume that 3% would be the figure vehemently opposed to it.

 

Which brings me back to the original point of these protesters wanting PIF out of the club, why would anyone of the 97% (the majority of supporters) be supportive ?
 

Nobody is condoning abusing them or dismissing concerns about human rights, but what they want ultimately puts them at odds with the vast majority of the fanbase does it not ? 

 

 

Edited November 3, 2022 by Whitley mag

[TheBrownBottle]

I’m ok with people not giving a shite and I’m ok with people protesting against the ownership.

 

I’ve no time for the rank hypocrisy of swathes of the press, and I do get irritated by a certain type of comment by NUFC supporters re all this.  One which goes something like ‘I knew nowt about KSA human rights abuses and don’t care about them now - and anyone who pretends they did is talking shite’.  It’s the assumption that everyone has the same interests in what goes on outside of the NE / UK.  The first part of that sentence is an honest one - no issues really if someone doesn’t give a shite.  Just don’t assume that what might apply to you and your mates applies to everyone else.  

[Pata]

It’s a fact that I can’t prove that the number would be very different if we were owned by someone decent instead of Ashley when PIF came knocking on our door. Everyone was just desperate to get rid of Ashley.

[OverThere]

Seems to me we are talking about Saudi way more than we ever did so not sure how the sports washing is painting them in a more favorable light. You would think the best course of action would be to maintain a much lower profile?

[ohmelads]

17 hours ago, Tiresias said:

Pretty much agree with everyone above, am skeptical of influence the other way to Saudi Arabia but I could be wrong.

 

There are two very intertwined, but also sometimes confused issues here. 

 

Money and Geopolitical involvement in sport. Just to illustrate distinction, if Saudi Arabia bought us for sportswashing but made no investment whatsoever it still would be wrong. I would also argue, that any nation state no matter their benevolence on the global scale should not buy football clubs to advertise themselves, even if everyone agrees how wonderful they are. To illustrate I think it's handy to think through what a football club is and ought to be, because it's not an advertising board for regimes, but also they aren't truly businesses either. They are too embedded and important to communities. To illustrate this immagine the sentimental community side of football was all bollocks, that it is just a paid piece of entertainment like Game of Thrones, then NUFC would have been cancelled 5 years into the Ashley regime, noone would go. 

 

Football clubs should be run and regulated with that in mind, but they are instead run to maximise profits or to be propaganda outlets. It's obscene. 

 

And then we get on the is it wrong for one club to be much richer than the others. Yes of course it is, a competitive league is absolutely integral to the quality of the league. It is slightly more complicated in that I do understand, the league wants the best players in it, and to get them you need to have more money in the league than other leagues, and we can't run it like a closed shop unless all the leagues accross europe all agreed to the same rules, but the super league idea which would have cemented the same 6 clubs into their position at the top would have killed the league. Clubs that are run really well like Brighton absolutely should have a chance of transfering that competence into challenging for the league and yet there is very very little chance of doing so, or even of getting top 4. Clubs run like Man U or Chelsea that make continuing mistakes or changes of direction but just spend their out of it should be punished. 

 

This is slightly why I am a bit less critical of the current Financial Fair Play rules, which are awful and seem geared to preventing clubs like us competing, they should do a lot more to limit some nonsense elsewhere, but, even if we would have done it this way anyway, I am happy to see us succeed by spending sensibly, buying players with sell on, looking to build academy, all stuff that is what should be done.

 

Unfortunately noone, not the league, not uefa, not the government, not the fa are interested in tackling these issues, because as discussed above, football is not a random tv show that will be cancelled if it is bad, everyone is too invested to take serious action so instead it is ruthlessly exploited to suck money out of it and to make Saudi Arabia look good. I sympathise a lot with a lot of football pundits who are appalled that football allowed us to be bought by saudi arabia, but they sometimes direct their ire at us as if we are the only ones who 'should' be boycotting football, as if that is a reasonable ask. 

 

 

Fair points.

 

The Saudi takeover is a symptom of a much, much bigger problem that you outline well there. The pundits you mention love to focus on it because it's a handy deflection from the corrupt and broken system which has rewarded them so handsomely. I'm sure we'll be hearing from them during the Qatar World Cup as they enjoy their slice of that pie as well. Call me a cynic, but if the Saudis weren't putting money in and we were harmlessly languishing around the relegation places, rival fans and pundits wouldn't care. People might say that's hypothetical, but look at Sheff United. 100% owned by a Saudi Prince since 2019, part owned by him since 2013. They even released their own 'Saudi' kit. No one talks about it and many don't even seem aware of it.

 

I'd happily see the Saudis gone IF the whole cartel system with European money was demolished and a regulated, fairer, sustainable system put in place (what they could look like is another debate entirely). As it is, we and 13 other Premier League clubs find ourselves permanently caught up in a rigged system in which the only way to lay a glove on the "big six" is with massive outside investment. Even then, if you don't spend it wisely, it can all backfire because of FFP (look at Everton). As you rightly point out, without outside money, you can be run far better than Man U yet you'll never get near them. We may become part of that cartel, or we may not, but the system is just as broken either way. Getting the Saudis out of Newcastle does absolutely nothing to fix football.

 

Incidentally, on the subject of FFP, it could have been and could yet be our undoing (let's see what other barriers are put in place by the big six), but so far it's done us a favour because the owners are being forced to come in and look at how they can grow the club sustainably.