It’s important to remember that, all things considered, the PIF project at Newcastle United is still moving at a strong pace, faster than many of us ever expected.
In the space of four and a half years, the team has been transformed from relegation battlers to European contenders, earning Champions League football twice and winning the Carabao Cup along the way.
But just what our ceiling is differs depending on who you ask. New CEO David Hopkinson reaffirmed in a recent interview on talkSPORT that the goal remained to be regularly competing for the ‘top prizes’ in world football very soon:
“We have total alignment on that (ambition). This is a club that, by 2030, will be consistently contending for the top prizes in global football. We have a lot of wood to chop between here and there. When I see Newcastle United, everywhere I look, I see opportunity.”
But Hopkinson’s words don’t appear to have resonated with talkSPORT’s Simon Jordan, who seems to be a lot more pessimistic about our vision to grow and succeed in the near future…
Over the last decade, we’ve seen ourselves, Aston Villa, Leicester and West Ham each spend lavishly to try and cement our place into the top six at the expense of the more ‘established’ clubs. But whether it be FFP, PSR, or having star players and management poached, we’ve each been hindered at the expense of the ‘Big Six’.
In his talkSPORT interview on Wednesday, Hopkinson feels that Newcastle’s time as both a footballing and financial powerhouse is coming, but Jordon doesn’t seem so sure.
“His comparisons aren’t really that reasonable, because there’s an established order that Newcastle are trying to break into, and are going to be restricted from doing so in the same way that Aston Villa are trying to break into it.
“They won’t be able to do so because Liverpool, Arsenal, Manchester City, Manchester United, Chelsea and perhaps Tottenham are already in that game.
“His big question is ‘How is he going to get himself into the game where surely Newcastle want to be, which is on equal footing with the guys that are already there?’”
Being on such an unequal financial field compared to the rest of the European clubs is our main detractor, and it does put us in such a disadvantageous position to even get going on the path to greater success.
“Are Newcastle going to win the Champions League? Because they can’t fight fire with fire. You can have the best endeavours, the best culture, the best motivation and all that. But you need to have the best players, you can’t turn water into wine.”
“Newcastle cannot win things unless the landscape, I hope they can, but unless the landscape is changed to make an opportunity for a club that can.
“This profit and sustainability load of old cobblers is nonsense, because there’s nothing more sustainable than having a nation state with all its wealth behind you.”
“I think it (winning the Champions League) is an ambition vision that’s unlikely to be reached.”
When David Hopkinson came into the club last year, he brought in a vast wealth of commercial and financial expertise that was sorely needed in our executive hierarchy.
Having previously worked with Real Madrid and the MSG group, Hopkinson recognises that the sooner we upgrade St James’ Park in any way, shape or form, the faster the project can move, something which Jordan heavily agrees on.
“Newcastle has a dedicated fanbase that’s focused and lives and breathes, eats its life around Newcastle. I think they could easily go to a 72-73,000 seat stadium.
“A new stadium gives a whole different opportunity but it becomes a geographic challenge for them because they don’t want to lose the relationship with the fanbase by moving it somewhere remote.
“If they want to live outside the opportunities that Man City and Chelsea had, because the rules have been changed, then they have to do something different.
“So the way they can do that is either build a new 75,000 seat stadium and create a raft of opportunities around that, including the valuation of the stadium, naming rights and all that kind of stuff. Or they put 25,000 extra seats in there and bring another £30-40m that way.”
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