The main stand had virtually emptied by the time Yasir al-Rumayyan and his four bodyguards walked slowly down the concrete steps leading from the directors’ box to the St James’ Park pitch. As the Newcastle chairman’s entourage headed on towards the tunnel en route for the home dressing room, the handful of journalists still in the ground feared for Eddie Howe.
It was early January 2022, Newcastle had just lost 1-0 at home to League One Cambridge United in the FA Cup and Rumayyan was over from Riyadh, checking on the progress made since the club’s controversial Saudi Arabian‑led takeover three months earlier.
Howe had been in the post since November but, with relegation beckoning, fans had begun speculating that a manager appointed after Unai Emery’s 11th-hour rejection of the role might be jettisoned. Instead, a calm Rumayyan told the players that the owners were “fully supportive” of Howe and appreciated the team’s effort and togetherness in adversity.
Given that Rumayyan also serves as the governor of Newcastle’s 80% shareholder, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), and a first lieutenant of the kingdom’s ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, those words carried considerable heft.
Behind the scenes, Newcastle’s staff in assorted areas, such as security, catering, administration, scouting and IT, had sensed things were changing for the better after years of feeling undervalued by the regime presided over by the previous owner, Mike Ashley.
The Saudis initially delegated day-to-day control of Newcastle to their minority co-owners and fellow directors, Amanda Staveley, her husband, Mehrdad Ghodoussi, and Jamie Reuben. That trio quickly told the new hierarchy they were facing an open goal. An early opportunity to win hearts and minds was staring them in face.
In February 2022, Newcastle applied to become a living wage employer, committed to paying staff, permanent or casual, more than the minimum wage. That decision to offer staff at least £9.90 an hour – now £10.90 an hour – goes a long way to explaining why the club is an infinitely happier place than during the 14 years of cost-cutting, diminishing employee perks and, sometimes, “divide and rule” managerial tactics that characterised Ashley’s tenure.
When Staveley and Ghodoussi conducted a staffing review and realised how modestly many back-stage personnel were rewarded they seemed shocked. Some employees had long periods without increased remuneration. Staveley and Ghodoussi also concluded that key departments were understaffed. The new chief commercial officer, Peter Silverstone, for instance, inherited a 40-strong commercial cohort, less than a quarter of the number employed by his former club, Arsenal.
If being majority-owned by a sovereign wealth fund helps explain why Newcastle describe themselves as offering competitive pay and pension provision, such improvements have also been facilitated by Howe keeping them in the Premier League in the spring of 2022.
The former Bournemouth manager’s coaching had much to do with not only that achievement but Newcastle’s subsequent fourth-place finish and attendant Champions League qualification, but PIF’s approach to transfer deals arguably proved pivotal.
If agents initially sensed an opportunity to make financial gains from a set of wealthy but possibly naive new owners they were sorely disappointed. Admittedly, Newcastle ended up spending about £95m in January 2022 but the resultant quintet of purchases including, most notably, Bruno Guimarães and Kieran Trippier, were astute.
“We have to be very careful and analytical,” said Staveley, stressing that Newcastle’s commercial revenue streams need to grow because of financial fair play restrictions which, in the Premier League’s case, dictate that clubs cannot exceed cumulative pre-tax losses of £105m over three years. “FFP has guided a lot of our transfer policy; we can’t afford a dud.”
Newcastle’s player outlay has soared to about £400m and encompasses the arrival of, among others, Sven Botman, Alexander Isak, Sandro Tonali and, the latest arrival confirmed on Tuesday, Tino Livramento. Small wonder the Saudis regarded the appointments, in 2022, of not merely Silverstone but the highly regarded Darren Eales and Dan Ashworth as chief executive and sporting director respectively as crucial.
Although Ashworth, a former FA technical director, is heavily involved in player recruitment, every purchase is scrutinised in detail by the owners, skilled in deal-making and possessing a penchant for playing transfer-market hardball.
Despite Rumayyan’s willingness to delegate and his collegiate business philosophy, Howe and Ashworth have learned to be patient while the Saudis, highly articulate when it comes to statistics, conduct their final analysis. All of which raises important questions about Saudi Arabia’s involvement at Newcastle. Is it a sophisticated form of sportswashing, smart international diplomacy or proof of Prince Mohammed’s, albeit often latent, modernising tendencies?
Few answers are forthcoming. Rumayyan and his fellow Saudi directors see no need for public accountability while Staveley, Reuben, Howe and co remain extremely circumspect about their owners.
Although Rumayyan features in Friday’s release of Prime Video’s four-part documentary We are Newcastle United, the series will reveal more about Staveley, Howe and the players than their bosses.
No Gulf-based director has spoken publicly to British media outlets. This stonewalling stance places Howe in an awkward position whenever he is periodically quizzed about Saudi’s atrocious human rights record and lack of women’s and LGBTQ+ rights.
Given that as a Bournemouth player he habitually read broadsheet newspapers on the team coach, he is unlikely to be unaware that, by June, Saudi had executed 54 citizens this year.
Howe remains unlikely to forget the post-match press conference at Chelsea in March 2022. Under a barrage of questions, he resolutely declined to condemn the execution of 81 men in the kingdom the previous day. “I’m going to stick to talking football, that’s all I’m concerned with,” he said, rather awkwardly.
As the former Newcastle manager Alan Pardew recently told the Times: “If you’re an intelligent person it [the Saudi ownership] must bother you. I know Eddie’s an intelligent person but that job, the attraction of Newcastle, can sway you.”
If the players are concerned about Jamal Khashoggi’s grisly murder, they show no public sign of it, preferring to discuss the owners’ multimillion-pound refurbishment of Newcastle’s training ground.
Indeed, rather than attempting to cast off their golden handcuffs, the squad have harnessed a recent dislike of the club from outside the north-east to positive effect. The defender Dan Burn recently said: “In our pre-match huddles we’ve said: ‘It’s us against the world.’” Equally, many of the fans ascending Gallowgate to fill their “cathedral on the hill” to customary 52,000 capacity are unlikely to be grappling with moral dilemmas concerning the kingdom’s treatment of its minority Shia Muslim population.
PIF’s speciality is global investment and two of its senior executives, Abdulmajeed Alhagbani and Asmaa Rezeeq, who are low-profile Newcastle directors, are regarded as stars in the world of high-stakes financial speculation.
Staveley describes PIF as “effectively a Saudi pension fund, managing money for future generations”. The Yorkshire-born financier was responsible for the Arab involvement, persuading Rumayyan to buy Newcastle after wangling an invitation aboard Mohammed bin Salman’s super yacht, Serene, on the Red Sea in 2019.
She remains adamant the takeover was about investment rather than sportswashing. “PIF wanted something very sustainable, something we can build,” she has said.
Four years on from listening to Staveley’s pitch, Rumayyan attends regular Newcastle board meetings in the somewhat less bling-encrusted surrounds of Alnwick Castle in Northumberland. He is not shy about using his impeccable, American-accented, English to tell club executives the club will become England’s “No 1”, increasing its value 10-fold.
Rezeeq appears integral to the pursuit of the ambition, but her presence in such an influential role challenges assumptions about the place of women in an ultra-conservative kingdom where most females must adhere to ultra-strict Islamic dress codes and experience severely restricted freedom of movement.
Where many western women routinely cover up on visits to Saudi, Staveley has delighted modernisers by leaving her hair uncovered during Newcastle’s warm-weather training trips to Riyadh and Jeddah.
The entire project is riddled with contradictions and paradoxes. Club owners from a country hardly synonymous with feminism are responsible for turning the women’s team fully professional while Reuben and Rumayyan hugging on the pitch when the former won a half-time penalty competition last spring came freighted with subtext.
Reuben’s roots lie in Iraq’s once thriving Jewish community and when, in the 1950s, his family fled religious persecution in Baghdad, arriving in England via India, the very idea of such a public embrace would have seemed impossible.
Today, Reuben Brothers, the company founded by Jamie’s billionaire father and uncle, is redeveloping a sizeable tract of central Newcastle in what appears set to become a regeneration partnership with PIF.
If some fret at the distinct similarities between the green away kit and the Saudi flag or the prospect of Mexico playing a friendly against Saudi Arabia at St James’ in September, for most fans any concerns are eclipsed by something rare. For the first time since Sir Bobby Robson’s tenure two decades ago Newcastle fans harbour genuine optimism that glory days await.
The Saudis have offered them hope, and hope is precious.
