Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed Bin Salman, will soon acquire a Premier League club. He will hold an 80 percent stake in Newcastle United and will spend up to 300 million pounds to take ownership of Mike Ashley’s hands.
The club, based at St James Park Stadium, will enter a new era in their history with a takeover that ended 13 years under the leadership of Mike Ashley, who has left many things behind. Mohammed Bin Salman has a net worth estimated at 7 trillion pounds. Although counted large, it turns out the crown prince is only ranked fourth.
The richest club owner in the Premier League is held by Sheikh Mansour (Man City) with a net worth of 17.7 trillion pounds. Second place is Roman Abramovich (Chelsea) with 9.2 trillion pounds. And third, Stan Kroenke (Arsenal) with £ 8 trillion.
Former Newcastle owner Sir John Hall (1992-2007) hopes that this takeover will start better times for the club. “I want to see the new owner not only flush money into the club in an irresponsible way, but to rebuild the football club properly,” rich Sir John quoted from Sky Sports.
The deal comes even when the most popular sport in the world is facing an unprecedented disruption from the Covid-19 pandemic that has wreaked havoc on football schedules globally and stopping the Premier League without any indication when this season will roll back.
Currently the agreement is being drafted through a consortium made by Amanda Staveley, a British financier with her company, PCP Capital Partners, in addition to that the company will also redeem the remaining 20 percent of the shares, assuming 10 percent of the funds come from Staveley personally and the rest from David and Simon Reuben, British property investors.
So who is this Amanda Staveley? She is a woman born in Yorkshire in April 1973 and married in 2011 to Iranian-born citizen Mehrdad Ghodoussi to be blessed with a child named Lexi. This family has homes in Dubai and Park Lane in London. It was even seen in the stands of St James’ Park in October 2017 before Mike Ashley announced his intention to sell the club.
Staveley is said to be the man behind the acquisition of Manchester City by Sheikh Mansour of Thaksin Shinawatra in 2009. In addition, he also wanted to buy a majority stake in Liverpool, but resigned after Fenway Sports Group valued the club’s value of 1 billion pounds.
Change the squad to be more classy
The team nicknamed The Magpies seems to be soon taken over by a consortium of Saudi Arabia and it seems that the rich will remodel the team on a large scale next season. Some names of coaches and topnotch players in their target such as former Juventus coach Maximiliano Allegri, Antoine Griezmann (Barcelona) and Arturo Vidal (Barcelona).
This will certainly change the status of Newcastle United. From mediocre clubs whose achievements go up and down the division into a top-tier club that has a string of star players. Abundant financial support from new club management is believed to be juggling Newcastle United into a star-studded team. To help with this effort, Mohammed bin Salman needed a great coach, and the possibility of being appointed was Allegri.
However, at the moment the Newcastle plan still has to be patient and wait for developments related to the continuation of the 2019/2020 season competition which has been delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Currently, Newcastle United are ranked 13th in the Premier League standings with a value of 35. They are 47 points behind Liverpool who are ranked first.
However, seeing their movements seem to want to ensure that to face the new season later, they really want to build a stronger team so they can compete for the Premier League title.A Sky Sports pundit said that there is a new owner, a new spirit, and certainly believed to be able to inject funds to buy new players (especially top players), but he also advised supporters to be patient and do not guide the champion target as soon as possible.
In addition Tony also stressed, that Newcastle United must be able to maintain the club’s balance sheet. Especially now that the price of the players is insanely expensive, so do not let the club’s finances actually become losers.
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