The number of issues that must be addressed at St James’ Park has surprised the Saudi-led consortium that bought Newcastle United from Mike Ashley, as per Chronicle Live.
Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, Amanda Staveley and the Reuben brothers bought the Toon for £305m one month ago.
Steve Bruce’s future as manager was their first task in charge, with the 60-year-old sacked with the club facing relegation.
Eddie Howe has now come in to take over the helm after signing a two-and-a-half-year contract on Monday. Ticking off another task on the PIF’s checklist after a lengthy search.
The next is to hire a Director of Football, and plans are gathering pace. With former Chelsea chief Michael Emenalo the favourite, after travelling to Saudi Arabia for talks last week.
Newcastle’s Saudi-led owners will start to roll out further plans for improvement once they have hired a sporting director.
They have spent the first month of their stewardship conducting a wide-ranging review into the club’s football operations. The evaluation covered multiple areas of the club, and raised numerous areas of concern.
Among the points raised included issues with ticketing, a lack of infrastructure and general staffing concerns. The Chronicle quote one source as describing the situation as worse than expected, having anticipated having to turn around a ‘bad’ situation when they took over.
“We knew it was bad before we took over, but some things have surprised us,” they said.
Are Newcastle heading on a brighter path under PIF and Howe?
Newcastle will hope the imminent arrival of a Director of Football, likely to be Emenalo, will help the club to plot a brighter path under the PIF and with Howe as manager.
But the Saudi-led consortium now in charge at St James’ see plenty of areas that need to be addressed. So, the road will be long, and will have to include avoiding relegation.
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