Newcastle cup win is a triumph for the glory game ... but where do they go from here?
In the wake of PIF's takeover of Newcastle, I spent time at the club, including with a co-owner, to explore what was happening. I've never written about this before.
I spent some time in Newcastle after the takeover by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) in October 2021, including two matchdays with Amanda Staveley, one of them in April 2022 and one in January 2023. They were fascinating, insightful occasions that I have never written about before.
Staveley was a minority shareholder in the club, owning 10% of NUFC at the time. But unknown to most people back then, she was effectively also running NUFC alongside her husband Mehrdad Ghodoussi (together, below, last weekend), under a management agreement whereby she was being paid by the Saudis to do so.
Given Newcastle’s success in Sunday’s Carabao Cup final against Liverpool at Wembley, some of what I learned in that post-takeover period might be instructive about what happens next at St James’ Park.
The ownership structure since July 2024 has switched from being 80% PIF, 10% Staveley and 10% Jamie Reuben to 85% PIF and 15% Reuben, or more specifically 15% RB Sports & Media, a firm where Newcastle’s website says Reuben is the ultimate beneficial owner.
Staveley and Mehrdad were at Wembley for Sunday’s final - guests of the owners despite some friction around their departure - and they were interviewed by Sky before the match.
It’s clear from that footage that Newcastle remains close to their hearts. And as much as they were invested in Newcastle as a commercial project (and gamble) long before 2021, from what I saw close up in 2022 and 2023, they were hands-on and all-in during their time at the club.
I’ve known Amanda professionally for about 20 years, due to her proximity to deals and proposed deals linking various Middle East would-be investors to English football clubs, and I suggested to her at one point in 2023 that she had become a Mother Hen at St James’ Park. She didn’t disagree.
I saw it up close, the affection she had for the players, and they for her, more of which later. She still messages the players, and Eddie Howe, and vice-versa. Not that there is any chance whatsoever she will be back there in any key role in the future.
I think the Saudis played a blinder is getting her to perform the role she did, at the time she did, but I’m pretty sure it was just part of a strategy on PIF’s behalf to gain acceptance - and adoration - from a fervently passionate fanbase.
Today’s piece will be split into two halves, one for all subscribers (regardless of whether you pay for SI or not) and the second for those who contribute to the running of this site via a monthly or annual subscription.
The first half will try to contextualise the Carabao Cup win’s significance to NUFC and its fans after no domestic trophy since the FA Cup of 1955. It will also examine Newcastle’s status as England’s ninth most successful club, all-time, in terms of major trophies, and how that might dramatically change. (Also, spoiler, it might not).
Newcastle have now won 12 major trophies in their history. Manchester City had won 9 before Sheikh Mansour bought them in 2008. They now have 27.
The second half will take you inside the Newcastle directors’ suite as the club rode a wave of feelgood optimism in 2022 and 2023, with Staveley the emotional heartbeat of the club, and a figurehead who could do no wrong in the city. She confided various stories I couldn’t report at the time - effectively due to politics with a small p - but can now.
Before we get onto any of that, I believe there are two fundamental ways for “neutral” football fans to view Newcastle’s win on Sunday.
First, it reinforced that football truly is the glory game. Winning, and trophies, are the point. And it doesn’t matter if the trophy isn’t the Champions League or the Premier League, and is, in the grand scheme of things, a bauble that many supporters consider to be a Mickey Mouse cup.
Many, many more would be absolutely thrilled to get their hands on that cup, just as West Ham’s fans were (rightly) delighted that David Moyes led them to the UEFA Europa Conference League triumph in 2023 and danced the night away (below). Silverware is silverware, and glory is glory.
Newcastle’s win on Sunday prompted widespread congratulations. Radio 5 Live did a phone-in all about it on Monday morning and fans of many other clubs called in to say they were pleased for Howe and his men.
There has been a national Dan Burn love-in. Eddie Howe is being lauded as a manager who should be immortalised in bronze outside the stadium.
Alan Shearer, on a special edition of ‘The Rest is Football’ podcast yesterday, exuded sheer joy as he described being at Wembley to see his club pick up the first trophy of his lifetime. He was born in 1970 and Newcastle’s last cup of any kind was the 1968-69 Inter-Cities Fairs Cup.
The second fundamental way that Newcastle’s win can be viewed is through the prism of their PIF ownership, and that they are merely another arm of a project to “sportswash” Saudi Arabia’s image. It won’t take you long to find derogatory comments about the Newcastle “fairytale” if you look on social media, and this piece by The Guardian’s Barney Ronay explores the conflicting effects of Newcastle’s win. It’s a good read.
As Barney writes: “Two things can be true simultaneously. Newcastle United winning a first major domestic trophy in 70 years is a euphoric feelgood story for the fans. This is true.
“That same trophy is also a first significant victory for the Saudi Arabian regime harnessing all this untamed human feeling to wash the blood and cruelty from its hands. This is also true.”
The end of 70 years of hurt
The last time Newcastle won a domestic trophy, in May 1955, Winston Churchill had just been replaced as Britain’s Prime Minister by Anthony Eden. Ruth Ellis became the last woman to be hanged in Britain that same year, a year in which Chelsea withdrew from the new and controversial European Cup at the request of the FA.
Until last Sunday, no fewer than 35 different football clubs had won at least one major domestic trophy since Newcastle won the 1955 FA Cup, with England’s top-flight title and both domestic cups being counted as “major”.
Those 35 clubs, in alphabetical order, are: Arsenal, Aston Villa, Birmingham, Blackburn, Bolton, Burnley, Chelsea, Coventry, Derby, Everton, Ipswich, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Luton, Man City, Man Utd, Middlesbrough, Norwich, Nottm Forest, Oxford, Portsmouth, QPR, Sheffield Wednesday, Southampton, Stoke, Sunderland, Swansea, Swindon, Tottenham, West Brom, West Ham, Wigan, Wimbledon and Wolves.
The upshot is Newcastle have now won 12 major trophies in their history, comprised of four top-division titles, six FA Cups, one League Cup plus the Fairs Cup of 1969. They remain the ninth most successful English club in terms of trophies (see below) and have slightly closed the gap to Everton in eighth place on 15 trophies.
I have been producing versions of the table above for most of the time that www.sportingintelligence.com has been in existence and the rationale for what is and isn’t a “major” trophy is in the small print in the graphic.
Basically, “season long” competitions are included and one-off events or competitions that have been one-offs in the past are excluded. I understand that different fans have different feelings about this - and it’s fine by me if some people disagree with my methodology.
I have experimented with giving different “weightings” to different trophies (for example 10 points for a league title or European Cup / Champions League) and five for an FA Cup, and so on. But actually it makes close to zero difference in the rankings for most of the clubs.
PIF takeover, new dawn?
When Newcastle fans discovered in October 2021 that the PIF takeover had finally gone though, many of them must have thought they, like Manchester City, would now be throwing cash at star players and huge wages and begin amassing the silverware that City have done.
It hasn’t quite worked out like that, and with PSR and other financial controls, it might not. But there will certainly be more investment than under Mike Ashley.
And the Saudi owners are in it for the long haul, as Amanda assured me on several occasions. Not least on one long day in January 2023, as we’ll see.
The rest of this article is for paying subscribers.