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Opinion

Saudi Arabia PIF selling Newcastle United assets could prove a game changer

2 years ago
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I would even go one step further than my previous Newcastle United / FFP article last week.

I know I may have to go into hiding after writing this next bit..

Sell the Newcastle United assets, future TV revenue, whatever – to raise finances to circumvent FFP.

Just bear with me before you start baying for blood and I need to go into witness protection.

Clubs have their assets stripped all the time, mostly against their own wishes, players refuse to sign new contracts which can run into tens of millions, have clauses put into their contracts having them below market value (Haaland), or have players wanting to leave and have no choice but to sell and cannot be adequately replaced. These things are enforced on to clubs and weaken them.

What if we did it differently? What if we asset stripped ourselves? What if we outsmarted them at their own game and made ourselves stronger in the process? Before you start looking for a hitman though, we need to look at the wider context why we can and so many others can’t.

The sale of our club did not cost £305million, it cost Saudi a lot more. They had to reluctantly settle their ongoing dispute with Qatar, close down beoutQ to get the Premier League to approve the deal. That settlement was reported on 6 October 2021, the sale of Newcastle United was if by magic announced the next day.

When it comes to sports, Saudi Arabia PIF are not shy at spending money, Liv golf offered $800 million to Tiger Woods just to get an over the hill has been to play in the liv golf tournament, So I ask, what would they have done to restore Saudi pride when it was turned down in front of the whole world by the Premier League?

Saudi did not and would not let that stand. Our third strip, our friendlies shown in Saudi, our sponsor in Saudi, or our trip to Saudi, lets you know exactly who owns the club and they have bound themselves to us in front of the whole world, there is no going back, we are a team owned by Saudi.

A humiliation to Newcastle will affect Saudi pride. Saudi not being able to pay their bills is beyond the unthinkable so by selling the assets it is nothing more than a way of getting money into the club immediately.

If I proposed the selling of assets by he who shall not be name (that FCB) then rightly so I should be shot for this and I would gladly hand you the gun myself, but this is not the FCB, they don’t want to just win the league they want to own it.

They want trophy after trophy after trophy, by the time they are done with us we will be financially the strongest team in the world.

Just look at Man City, they have in terms of financial revenue overtaken manure and only a relatively smaller proportion of their income now comes from the questionable sponsorship deal.

So why not kick start the process at Newcastle United? Why not quicken the allowed investment?

We could sell all our assets and lease them back to us via a company not too distantly linked to Saudi Arabia PIF, but could never be proven in a court of law. Sell the assets and then rent them back to us at favourable rates, or even delaying the payback for a few years. They could put in clauses to reassure the fanbase that the assets could not be sold onto another third party and if the company that holds the assets miraculously went bankrupt, those assets would automatically be reverted back to Saudi Arabia PIF. We could raise £500-600 million tomorrow, combined with 400 million we could spend with amortisation, that is the potential to spend £1billion and it all falls within FFP.

It is a win win situation when you are selling the asset to yourself through a third-party, putting hundreds of millions back into the club, the assets are going nowhere, it is a signature on a piece of paper and nothing more, beating them at their own game.

The rules are fixed in the favour of those at the top and sometimes you can rig the game to favour you. I am all for it, putting two fingers at the Premier League and smiling at the same time as they have been doing that to us for years.

Footnote – Please don’t show this to Daniel Levy.

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