Tweet
Re: EPL 2021-2022 Season
This is another well written article from the Guardian
Particularly liked this bit
"There will of course be a hostile response to such observations, if only because football, and indeed all human experience, has become so aggressively tribal. There is a genuine conviction out there that uneasiness over a Saudi presence in English football is based in hostility towards Newcastle United. In reality the opposite is true: it is an expression of respect for the club as something of value.
Yet there is also an undeniable logic in the argument that this is nobody else’s business; that the world is bent a certain way; and that it isn’t Newcastle’s job to fix it.
Welcome to English football 2021, a place where nobody is really clean. From the first stirrings of the Deep Thatcherite model, to the Scudamore globalism years, to laundromat finances, hidden investors, blood money at three removes, the Premier League hasn’t just thrown its moral compass overboard. It never actually brought one on deck in the first place.
And so we arrive at a place where there can be no good owners, no white knights, no sane model capable of competing, or even any way of fixing this. Why should Newcastle alone carry that flag? Why don’t we all just dive in and gorge ourselves on the entrails?
There are two points worth making about this. First, there is still such a thing as a question of degree. Walk arm-in-arm with the Saudi state and the faux morality around football simply collapses. By way of example, the chief operator behind the fund that will act as the Premier League’s newest member, is, according to US intelligence, personally responsible for ordering the murder of a Saudi citizen who was dismembered.
Is that going to work? How closely does this – bone-sawing your political opponents – fit with that idea of governance, of integrity, of benevolent control of the national asset? What is the correct response here? Apart, obviously, from “Announce Mbappé”?"
I think there is a general understanding that Newcastle and the fans are excited by getting rid of Ashley and the upcoming influx of cash, and that this situation isn't of their making, but hopefully there is also understanding that questions need to be asked of the processes which got us to this point.
This is another well written article from the Guardian
Particularly liked this bit
"There will of course be a hostile response to such observations, if only because football, and indeed all human experience, has become so aggressively tribal. There is a genuine conviction out there that uneasiness over a Saudi presence in English football is based in hostility towards Newcastle United. In reality the opposite is true: it is an expression of respect for the club as something of value.
Yet there is also an undeniable logic in the argument that this is nobody else’s business; that the world is bent a certain way; and that it isn’t Newcastle’s job to fix it.
Welcome to English football 2021, a place where nobody is really clean. From the first stirrings of the Deep Thatcherite model, to the Scudamore globalism years, to laundromat finances, hidden investors, blood money at three removes, the Premier League hasn’t just thrown its moral compass overboard. It never actually brought one on deck in the first place.
And so we arrive at a place where there can be no good owners, no white knights, no sane model capable of competing, or even any way of fixing this. Why should Newcastle alone carry that flag? Why don’t we all just dive in and gorge ourselves on the entrails?
There are two points worth making about this. First, there is still such a thing as a question of degree. Walk arm-in-arm with the Saudi state and the faux morality around football simply collapses. By way of example, the chief operator behind the fund that will act as the Premier League’s newest member, is, according to US intelligence, personally responsible for ordering the murder of a Saudi citizen who was dismembered.
Is that going to work? How closely does this – bone-sawing your political opponents – fit with that idea of governance, of integrity, of benevolent control of the national asset? What is the correct response here? Apart, obviously, from “Announce Mbappé”?"
I think there is a general understanding that Newcastle and the fans are excited by getting rid of Ashley and the upcoming influx of cash, and that this situation isn't of their making, but hopefully there is also understanding that questions need to be asked of the processes which got us to this point.
Comment