It’s an issue whenever it happens. I sympathize with Newcastle fans over Ashley, a dreadful owner and from what I can tell a terrible human being. if I were a Newcastle fan I’d be hugely relieved to see the back of Ashley, and hopeful that the club's future brings better fan-owner relationships and success on the pitch.
I don't want to make this too heavy, but football fans (in my opinion) aren't just spectators but custodians of grassroots institutions. Owners come and go, but fans remain.
And from that perspective, as
David Conn points out, there are many reasons to be very suspicious and even downcast about this change in ownership. Depending on how you slice it, it's an absolute monarchy or dictatorship with a backwards and highly theocratic legal system, and an appalling human rights record. Seeing (a very few, to be fair) Newcastle fans waving Saudi Arabian flags in the streets is a very short-sighted, and frankly distasteful, sight.
Newcastle fans claim that nobody has the right to criticize them because they've had a raw deal for decades and ‘Everyone’s doing it now, why can’t we?’. But this is bigger than Newcastle. It doesn’t make the terrible ownership models that are increasingly ruining the game OK. We have to call it out every time it happens or the game is lost to this new paradigm. The raw deal part for Newcastle fans is true, but it is also true that the fans are welcoming ownership by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), chaired by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. If I were a Newcastle fan I would be very suspicious of this group and I would be extremely suspicious of their claims that the Saudi government will have no involvement with or control over how their club is run. The PIF and the government are inextricably linked through the persons involved in both.
We constantly hold players, managers, and owners to account. The fans have a responsibility too. I have limited my monetary outlay on Liverpool because I am suspicious of FSG. Had they gone into the Super League I would have stopped supporting the team as long as it operated under that model. I spend more on Columbus because they are a smaller club and (apart from the recent awful logo affair) I have decided to reward them for their running of the club.
If I were a Newcastle fan I would, again, be hopeful, but not optimistic, and I would not be buying merch and tickets.
We as fans need to see ourselves as in this together, regardless of club affiliation. Otherwise we can never complain when owners arbitrarily act against our interests and either run clubs into the ground, price us out of the game, or turn our sporting institutions into national propaganda tools.
I hope all my suspicions about Newcastle's new owners turn out to be wrong. I hope the Toon Army are on the verge of a new bright period in the club's history. But there are genuine reasons to be very concerned.
