Oli Lewis believes that Newcastle United are a “very deserving fanbase”, but “it does leave a sour taste in my mouth”, when digging deeper into the new takeover.
The recent purchase of Newcastle by the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund has “taken over” headlines on the back pages of newspapers all around the world, but many are concerned with the violation of human rights that comes with it.
“I studied politics throughout school so I’m very aware on the topic of human rights. For them to be able to splash their cash…it’s a bitter pill to swallow”, for a team Lewis was “excited to see the takeover go towards.”
However Lewis believes that it isn’t just Newcastle’s owners we should be focusing on.
“No one is exactly clean as clean be, you have the American ones who are dodgy, the eastern European ones, the other oil companies and all of them aren’t perfect. To treat Newcastle as an isolated case is definitely out of the issue.”
When asked whether the major sum of $300 billion at Newcastle’s disposal would be bad for football, Lewis responded that “FFP can be quite poor and hard to manage, transfer bans aren’t exactly the most effective form of punishment.”
Clearly hinting that more needs to be done to prevent money from taking over football.
On Wednesday morning Steve Bruce was sacked after his 1,000th managerial match, a 3-2 loss to Tottenham at St James’ Park.
“It was quite good for the owners to give him his 1,000th game, it was very honourable, he wasn’t going to last much longer under Mike Ashley anyway”, Lewis said, “when they went 1-0 up, you thought maybe Bruce is the man…but it was pretty obvious he was going to go, it was time to move on.
“This Newcastle squad doesn’t deserve to be in 19th, Bruce wasn’t the man for it at the time”. After eight games, The Magpies sit with zero wins, three draws and five loses, conceding 19 goals in those games, three more than 20th placed Norwich.
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Lewis believes Eddie Howe is the man to take the new job.
His last job was “quite an amazing feat with Bournemouth”, as he took them from League Two all the way to the Premier League.
“Getting from the bottom of the Premier League to the top is very similar from getting from the bottom of the football league to the Premier League.
“He isn’t the man that will win them the Premier League title but I think he is the man that can help build them up and build a consistent squad to finish in the top half.”
Many are wondering when Newcastle will get their first piece of silverware under the new owners, Lewis believes that in “two or three years we can see a tactical targeting of the League Cup and FA Cup”.
“I think the Premier League, at the moment, we are going through one of the best eras we’ve seen, with the likes of Liverpool, Manchester City and Chelsea all being strong favourites for the title.
“You won’t be able to see Newcastle get to that level as quick as they hope”, but many believe that in time Newcastle will be back fighting with the big boys soon.
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