Tommy Martin: Newcastle's first big signing - useful local idiots

The delirium on Tyneside since the club’s takeover, which reached crescendo ahead of Sunday’s game against Tottenham, has been as much down to the departure of the hated Mike Ashley as the identity of the wealthy new owners

There was no mistaking the concern on the faces of Newcastle fans as one of their fellow supporters lay unconscious amid the St James’s Park throng last Sunday.

Players from both sides, match officials and medical personnel bore the grave expressions of those aware a human life hung in the balance.

Thankfully the man was saved, helped by quick responses from supporters, including the attentions of an A&E doctor and a cardiologist. A harrowing story became a feelgood one. The hero of the hour, Dr Tom Prichard, appeared on the BBC news the next day. On a strange Tyneside afternoon, the better of angels of our nature shone through.

But then it is easier to cherish the life of a fellow human being when they are right in front of you in the Gallowgate End. When they are toiling in a distant prison cell for expressing a political opinion or being bombed to pieces in a Yemeni schoolyard or being hacked up in an Istanbul embassy kitchen by a state-sponsored hit squad like the journalist Jamal Kashoggi?

Much more difficult. Or so it would appear, given the rapturous reception the same Newcastle fans gave their new chairman, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, representative of the club’s Saudi Arabia-backed ownership.

The delirium on Tyneside since the club’s takeover, which reached crescendo ahead of Sunday’s game against Tottenham, has been as much down to the departure of the hated Mike Ashley as the identity of the wealthy new owners. And close observers on Sunday say fair-minded Magpies felt uneasy at the more demented aspects of the hoopla, which included fans welcoming the new era in full-on Arabian fancy dress.

But the collective effect was of a support who had processed the revulsion about their club’s new overlords and pronounced themselves thoroughly delighted. As part of the kingdom’s plan to divest itself of oil dependency and establish a thrusting modern economy, the PR value of a worldwide audience seeing ecstatic English football fans fly the Saudi flag was incalculable, even if they were wearing tea-towels on their heads at the time.

The welcome given by the Geordie hordes to their new owners was uncomfortable but not surprising. Soft-power weaponisation of an enthusiastic fanbase has been shown to be of huge value for a ‘sportswashing’ exercise such as the Saudis are undertaking.

Romantic notions about the fundamental decency of a football club’s working class fanbase seem naive in the current, tribalist disposition. Sport is a moral quagmire. Saudi Arabia has already spread its influence into Formula One, golf, boxing, and other areas of football, as well as the economy at large. The Saudis are acting from the playbook used so successfully by Qatar and Abu Dhabi. Newcastle fans see their own government doing arms deals with the kingdom.

Everyone else is doing it, so why can’t we?

But the relish with which the takeover was greeted can only lead one to consider modern fandom as an illness, or an addiction, something over which the people afflicted are not in control, even as it causes them to defend the indefensible. The common urge to excuse Newcastle fans, to say they “can’t be blamed” for their defiant glee, only corroborates this view.

While Newcastle’s new owners might have been expecting to enlist an army of black-and-white clad propagandists, the enthusiasm with which prominent figures within the game have signed up must have them rubbing their eyes with delight.

Battalions of ex-Newcastle players have applauded the takeover: Former players like to keep in with their old clubs, ambassadorial gigs being a plum earner. Shay Given was quick out of the traps, lauding the deal on BBC the morning after it went through, saying he preferred to “stick to the football” when questions turned to human rights.

Alan Shearer, the greatest Toon hero of them all, has delicately ridden the general Geordie glee while occasionally furrowing his brow about the bigger picture. On Saturday’s Match of the Day, he and Mark Chapman dedicated one minute to the subject.

“I understand that tough questions will be asked, and rightly so,” Shearer said, “but Newcastle fans can’t be blamed for that, they don’t make up the directors and owners test, so I don’t blame them at all for celebrating.”

That’s that then.

At least Shearer acknowledges there are questions. Jamie Redknapp was front and centre on Sky’s coverage of Sunday’s game. He is a personal friend and associate of Jamie Reuben, part of the new consortium and now a director at the club.

“The truth is,” said Redknapp, “I don’t think the majority of football fans care who owns their club.

“I think if you were going to go into the business dealings of a lot of Premier League owners, we mightn’t even have a league. Of course, Newcastle fans are so excited… Right now, the Newcastle owners are delighting this city.”

Come on in, the water is toxic.

On Monday Night Football there was Gary Neville, scourge of nefarious club owners during the Super League affair. Neville adopted the view that having the Saudis around the Premier League table would encourage them to see the error of their ways. “I long for a world where there can be harmony,” Neville said, “and I do believe sport can be a massive driver for change and can bring harmony.”

When Jamie Carragher mused whether murdering journalists might not be crossing a line slightly, even by Premier League ownership standards, Neville described his experiences at the 2018 World Cup in Russia and how that country seemed like a perfect place for those weeks thanks to sport’s healing power. Alexei Navalny, a political opponent of president Vladimir Putin who languishes in jail on trumped up charges after surviving an assassination attempt, might tell Neville how long the idyll lasted.

The handwringing about human rights will soon be placed to one side as transfer talk ramps up. Fans might put the tea-towels away but will continue to revel in the gossip ahead of the January window. Former players will be happier talking about who might succeed Steve Bruce as manager than terrible things being done to other human beings in faraway places.

While Newcastle’s new owners are unable to sign any new players for the moment, they have already recruited plenty of useful idiots to their cause.