Sunderland supporting journalist appals Newcastle AND Sunderland fans with stadium claims | OneFootball

Sunderland fan (and journalist…) Louise Taylor has long been seen as a bit of a joke by Newcastle United fans, now she has succeeded in uniting Newcastle AND Sunderland fans with her latest.

Covering the north east clubs for many years, she has done little to hide her bias.

Sunderland fans would argue that this is simply a bit of a levelling up, due to the ‘MagMedia’ , the north east press pack that is supposedly dominated by Newcastle United supporting journalists.

Maybe there are a majority of north east football journalists who lean more towards Newcastle United.

However, the reality is that Newcastle United will always be a bigger story than Sunderland, which is in essence is what really winds the Mackems up.

Sunderland fans have had a long running bizarre issue with Keith Downie, who is from over the border and clearly no allegiance to either club. Yet for almost a decade now he has been given so much stick for Sunderland not given as much prominence as Newcastle United with his Sky Sports reporting, ignoring totally the fact that you are comparing a Premier League club with a lower league club one, for some years a third tier club!

Anyway, Louise Taylor of The Guardian is a Sunderland fan who wears her heart on her sleeve, proud of the fact she is fully paid up member of the Mackem fanbase, growing up outside the area but having a Sunderland supporting father.

Her lame attempts to wind up Newcastle United fans are legendary, the latest being in November 2024, when Louise Taylor claimed that Eddie Howe could be sacked and replaced by Jose Mourinho. This ‘report’ was written immediately after Newcastle had defeated Arsenal 1-0 at St James’ Park, only days after a midweek 2-0 victory over Chelsea…

In her latest reporting on Newcastle United, Louise Taylor is at it again.

She is writing ahead of Newcastle United facing Arsenal in the Carabao Cup semi-final tonight, United having won all of their last six matches, scoring 18 and conceding only two, defeating Villa, Man U (away) and Spurs (away) in their most recent three games, only a point off fourth place Chelsea with NUFC having closed ten points on the Blues across the last four PL games for both.

Yet this is part of what Sunderland fan Louise Taylor has written…

‘Given that two of his key players, Bruno Guimarães and Fabian Schär – crucially, Howe’s sole fit right-footed centre-half – are suspended for the visit to the Emirates Stadium, Mikel Arteta’s title-chasing team unsurprisingly kick off as favourites. Yet even if Newcastle’s hopes of reaching a second Carabao Cup final in three seasons are left in tatters, a second Champions League qualification within the same timeframe could still be within touching distance.

After all, five straight Premier League victories have camouflaged, and perhaps even repaired, the behind-the-scenes fissures that disrupted the team’s early season progress. ‘

Pretty much all neutrals raving about how Newcastle United have been performing and the direction they appear to be heading in, such excitement amongst NUFC fans, with so many quality players excelling and yet… she talks of hopes could be ‘left in tatters’ and recent results having ‘camouflaged’ the ‘behind-the-scenes fissures’!

Yes, this really captures the current mood AND reality!

Can you imagine if Sunderland were one cup-tie from Wembley, one point off the top four (in the Premier League!!!) and in the best form of any club. Can you really imagine this Guardian journalist, or indeed any journalist, trying so hard to stamp down on the positivity flowing around that club???

IMAGO/Uk Sports Pics Ltd

Then this classic, where it is yet another massive positive Newcastle United aspect she is writing about and yet trying to make into such a negative story.

Newcastle fans at last set to hear in the near future, just how much of a bigger capacity stadium we are going to get and where it will be, a much bigger stadium that will allow far more fans to watch their team AND give a massive boost financially in being able better to compete on transfer fees and wages.

The Guardian journalist desperate to trample of the Newcastle United fans positivity but she has inadvertently also upset many of her fellow Sunderland fans with this nonsense.

Sunderland fan Louise Taylor writing in The Guardian – 6 January 2025:

‘By mid-March the majority Saudi Arabian-owned club are expected to have finally announced a long-awaited decision as to whether or not they plan on spending around £1bn on rebuilding St James’ Park with an increased 65,000 capacity. The alternative is to invest three times that sum and construct a new, potentially matchday-revenue doubling, 75,000-capacity stadium elsewhere in the city.

Either option will almost certainly prompt months of planning wrangles, not to mention the likely need to share the Stadium of Light with Sunderland while a potential rebuild takes place. That would be unpopular in some quarters but there seems no realistic alternative. Moreover, if Milan and Inter can share San Siro, the two north-east rivals can surely cohabit for a while.’

I have seen plenty of outrage from Sunderland fans to this nonsense and for once I have some sympathy/understanding, as they are saying why should/would they as Mackems have to accept an inevitability of Newcastle United fans automatically taking over their stadium every other week?

The reality is of course that this whole ‘report’ is daft on so many levels, on top of that Mackem outrage at Taylor’s ridiculous claims.

If the Newcastle United owners decided on a brand new stadium on a totally different site, even if very close by up the road at Leazes Park/Castle Leazes, why on earth would NUFC have to play at Sunderland whilst it was under construction? The team would simply keep playing at St James’ Park until the new stadium was ready, just as Arsenal, Man City, West Ham and others have done, the same as Everton are currently doing.

A redeveloped St James’ Park? The same again. No need to play at Sunderland. Not as ideal as a totally brand new stadium on a different site but manageable.

Newcastle United continued playing at St James’ Park when major redevelopment happened and SJP became an all-seater 36k+ stadium in the early 90s. Then same again when St James’ Park was expanded to 52k+ in time for the 2000/01 season kicking off.

If United stay at St James’ Park, then it is universally expected that the Gallowgate end will be where most of the extra seats will be added. Even if that end was totally closed off, it only holds 11,000 seats currently, so whilst rebuilding work was happening at that end, I have no doubt that a capacity of over 40,000 would still be possible. There are only around 30,000 season ticket holders after Ashley did his best/worst and prompted a boycott by many season ticket holders so whilst those ST holders in the Gallowgate would have to be temporarily relocated, it would be possible, as well as still giving away fans their allocation, though members would see their supply of tickets massively decrease. Still, it would be for the long-term good.

Plenty of other clubs have done similar as well. Anfield in recent years has gone from 44k+ to now 61k+, Liverpool didn’t have to play elsewhere during the building work.

I think the whole aim of this having to play at Sunderland, is clearly a deliberate attempt to try and make out that the process of Newcastle fans getting a bigger capacity stadium will be so so so difficult, even impossible…

The Milan comparison is beyond lame as well, when it comes to making a comparison.

The clue is in the names! AC Milan and Inter Milan are two clubs in the same city. They all live amongst each other and have shared a stadium as long as they can all remember.

Unless you have any of them who can remember going to games before the second world war, AC Milan fans and Inter Milan fans know nothing other than sharing a stadium, as they have done from 1947 onwards.

As the Guardian journalist very well knows, Newcastle Upon Tyne and Sunderland are two very separate places, separate cities even now. Each with a totally different identity and population.

If you suspend reality and pretended this was something that Newcastle United and Sunderland would agree to do, can you imagine Northumbria Police and their reaction???

For starters, they are not even used to ever having to deal with a full to capacity Stadium of Light, unless Newcastle United or Beyonce are visiting.

Louise Taylor says that it ‘would be unpopular in some quarters’ if Newcastle United played every other week at the Stadium of Light for what would be likely a couple of years.

I think ‘unpopular in some quarters’ doesn’t come remotely close to touching the sides. The logistics of exactly how 45,000+ Newcastle United fans (and the 3,000 ‘away’ fans) would successfully manage to get to the Stadium of Light is one thing. However, then even if you believed that was possible every other week, what happens when those 45,000 actually arrive in Sunderland!!!

Yes, twenty/thirty thousand Newcastle United fans drinking pre and post-match in Sunderland, what could possibly go wrong???

Our favourite Sunderland supporting journalist, if she really wants to play fantasy football, needs to instead concentrate on dreaming of her own team one day getting back into the same league as their ‘Saudi’ (her favourite word seemingly, I wonder why…) neighbours.