“YEEEESSSS!” screamed Eddie Howe, thrusting a clenched right hand high into the air, on a late May afternoon at Stamford Bridge. A sweaty, sunburnt, occasionally topless Newcastle United away end responded in kind. On the final day of the 2022-23 campaign, Howe was punching a full stop to a remarkable journey in which the Magpies’ boss and the club’s new owners had transformed them from winless relegation fodder to a League Cup final and fourth in the Premier League.
Howe & Co had unlocked the door to the Champions League in just 18 months. He had spent most of that time straight-batting tough questions about the club’s investment from Saudi Arabia, staying balanced through the highs and lows. As he walked across the pitch to applaud the supporters after the full-time whistle at Chelsea, he exploded for just a moment, the emotion at the achievement briefly visible.
The first stage of the Magpies’ journey was complete, but there’s more to come. This is the inside story of Newcastle post-takeover metamorphosis under Howe, and how the club’s owners intend to sustain that success.
VOLCANIC ERUPTION
Newcastle are a club well acquainted with nadirs. One of the most pronounced and recent came at a moist Molineux in October 2021. Two blasts of Wolves’ Eurodance goal music sandwiched a rare Jeff Hendrick strike for the Magpies, as ‘We want Brucey out’ chants greeted another lacklustre defeat.
Such displeasure at manager Steve Bruce had been an audible staple for the majority of a miserable start to a seven-game-old league campaign. No wins, three draws, four defeats, 16 goals conceded. It was match number 999 in the dugout for Bruce and he was in a real emergency situation. His side sat second bottom of the table, having also battled relegation the previous season, before a late rally secured a 12th-placed finish.
Federico Fernandez was Newcastle’s captain at Molineux – somewhat bizarrely, he emerged for the second half wearing Javier Manquillo’s shirt instead of his own. It encapsulated the club’s dysfunction. “It was tough because the previous year we were in the same situation,” the Argentine explains to FourFourTwo now. “The group knew the situation and how to come out of it, but it was not a good performance at Wolves.”
Matthew Raisbeck, lead commentator for BBC Radio Newcastle, travelled back from the game that evening by rail. “They’d given up,” he says of Newcastle’s sodden support. “There was one lad, I remember it well, who told me that the season was over, that they were going down. He wanted them to get relegated because it would hurt [then owner] Mike Ashley, and that was all he had left.”
Five days later, Ashley was gone. ‘Cans?’ had previously been the code word among fans – a one-word question posed after every update that contained even a semblance of hope that a takeover was imminent. The Toon Army had been under celebratory starter’s orders for months, but their tinnies hadn’t left the fridge.
An indication of the fans’ desire for change in ownership came via a poll conducted by the club’s supporters’ trust – 93.8 per cent of members voted in favour of a takeover being greenlit by the Premier League.
PCP Capital Partners, RB Sports & Media and the Public Investment Fund were the prospective custodians, a consortium comprised of husband-and-wife business partners Mehrdad Ghodoussi and Amanda Staveley, billionaire British property developers the Reuben family and Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund respectively. With estimated assets of £538 billion, PIF would be fronting 80 per cent of the deal.
Newcastle’s defeat at Wolves marked 18 months since a price of £305m had been agreed with Ashley, who was finally ready to sell after 14 unhappy years. But there was a snag. Amid a political dispute, Saudi Arabia were blocking Qatar’s beIN Sports network from broadcasting in their country – beIN had exclusively screened Premier
