Surely Newcastle United fans can expect more than just a brand new stadium | OneFootball

During transfer windows, I tend to just park myself under the radar and avoid all the gossip, this 2025 January transfer window was no exception.

One typical example of a reason for this, is my previous statement that, while I didn’t rate Lloyd Kelly, it would be madness to sell him, for no other reason than he can provide back-up for Newcastle United in a couple of positions, and if there is one thing the team needs it’s strength in depth.

Turns out he can play four positions.

Turns out that as well as playing centre-back and left-back, he can also play terzino sinistro and difensore centrale. So we moved him on.

Finally, on the transfer front, farewell to Miggy, against whom I do not believe a negative word can be said. The consummate professional, who more than made up for the fact that he does not actually have a right foot, with his effort and enthusiasm during his time with us.

Another victim of circumstance, his link-up play on the right with Trippier was at times sublime, but when a combination of injury and bench-warming limited Trippier’s appearances, Miggy ended up paying the price.

I can’t blame him for wanting to head back to the states. Every footballer has to do what is best for them.

In a couple of years time his poor bairn Francesco is going to have a hell of a time at school with his Spanglish accent with an American Geordie twang about it.

Another reason I try to avoid transfer windows is the average journo’s insistence that because they are called “windows”, it would be “humorous” to refer to them as “slamming shut”, when in reality they do anything but.

We know when they close and they close entirely as expected. I’m allergic to cliches.

Talking of cliches, reading one of the local newspapers recently, I was horrified to read Alexander Isak referred to as being “worth his weight in gold”.

With gold currently sitting around 71.38 pounds a gramme, and Isak said to weigh in at around 77 kilos, that would suggest that this particular journo values our striker at a measly five and a half million pounds.

And he claims to be a Newcastle United fan.

Right. Back to the intended topic.

On the PSR front, PIF came steaming out the blocks when they arrived, spending Saudi money while still only bringing in Ashley revenue. And fair play to them, they did the same again the following season. Even if they were working with Jimmy Carr’s accountants, it was inevitable that they were going to have to cut back on the spending at some point to give revenue a chance to catch up with expenditure.

We’re getting there…but it’s taking a while.

I think it would be fair to argue that from a player perspective we can get by with what we have. Bizarrely, when we turn up, we can take on any team in the league. I just think we have a problem at times with changing our game to more better accommodate our opponent’s style.

I’m not a great believer in the idea that one week our players are brilliant but the next they’re all rubbish. It’s much more likely that they come at us with tactics we didn’t quite expect, which I think was obvious with Fulham and Bournemouth, and no amount of pitchside scribbling and a half-time pep talk is enough to sort it on the day.

So what can we spend money on?

All the talk at the moment is about a training facility, but…

In my last article on The Mag, I said that a new stadium was AN option, but the truth is that if we want to move forward, and increase revenue to buy players, a new stadium is actually THE ONLY option.

Building a stadium to increase seats is not PSR restricted, but the money those seats bring in goes straight on to the profit side of the ledger, increasing revenue.

Unless of course the Premier League figure out we are about to do that and come up with a new ‘regulation”.

I lived half my life in the Middle East, spending time in Saudi, Bahrain, the UAE and Qatar, and while there are many things that I could say about the Gulf States (but I might want to go back), one that I will say is, they don’t do things by half.

Having figured out many years ago that the oil and gas can only last so long, in their efforts to establish Saudi Arabia as a tourist destination, while it’s still gushing, there are a number of huge projects currently on the go there, the scale of which would bring tears to your eyes.

NEOM, at an estimated cost of around 1.5 trillion US Dollars, includes a linear city (The Line), a hub for clean industry, a mountainside ski resort and a luxury island destination.

Qiddiya is on the outskirts of Riyadh and is planned to be a 376 square km site that will incorporate parks, sports facilities, art academies, entertainment venues, outdoor recreation zones and resort hotels, including a championship golf course and a Jack Nicklaus-designed Formula One racetrack.

Or is it the other way round?

If you have been to Dubai you will be familiar with the Burj Khalifa and Palm Island, not to mention the indoor ski slope at the Mall of the Emirates, complete with penguins.

Abu Dhabi has it’s very own Louvre museum, a Ferrari world with the fastest Roller Coaster in the world, The Emirates Palace hotel, which has a gold bar vending machine and a Christmas tree decorated with millions of dollars worth of jewels, and regardless of your religious proclivities, the stunningly beautiful Sheikh Zayed Mosque is definitely worth a visit!

In one of the most bizarre attempts to “beat the neighbours”, at one time Abu Dhabi had the largest flagpole in the world – it has a lift up the middle of it – but if you wanted to see the largest flag you had to drive two hours down the road to Dubai!

But, before you drift off (again?), let me drag you back to our Newcastle United owners and what they could do if the fancy took them.

Take a look at Wembley and think how could they make it better?

And believe me, they would want it to be better!

Interestingly, there’s a business consideration that might limit the capacity of our new stadium.

Too small and we don’t get the revenue we need – which is where we are now!

Too big and we have empty seats, which is not a good look.

So what is the “Goldilocks” capacity that we can fill every match and still have demand for season tickets when they come up?

Some are claiming around the 65,000 – 70,000 mark. To me, sixty five doesn’t seem worth a new stadium. Could we regularly pack out 80,000 seats?

The King Abdullah Sports City, 20 miles north of Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, has a 64,000 seater stadium.

Outside the main stadium, the city has three additional football fields and four small indoor arenas.

There are also six tennis courts and a large multi-purpose indoor arena for sports, concerts etc.

With plenty of scope to use football pitches for rugby, a redesign to cater for our northern weather (maybe fewer open air tennis courts), and perhaps a hotel, we might have a decent starting point for the largest sports complex in the UK, if not Europe.

What’s next? A shopping mall and a cinema complex?

Chuck in a new Metro station nearby and I think we’re done.

Of course, this wouldn’t all fit on the Town Moor or the Race Track, but if you’re going to do it, you do it properly, right?

Back on planet earth we hear a lot of fans saying “yeah, okay, I accept we have to move, but we have to stay in the middle of Newcastle!”

Sorry lads and lasses but in all seriousness, even if we just went with a new stadium, where do you think we are going to build something so immense in the middle of town? The internet is awash at the moment with suggestions that we will build on Leazes Park but planning permission would be a nightmare with the greens taking on the black and whites head on.

I used to work for a boss who single-handedly managed to mangle all aspects of the English language while being totally oblivious to the fact he was doing it.

Well, he was from Durham.

“Why have a dog and whistle yourself” was a favourite of his, as was “hitting the nail right between the eyes”. While writing the specifications for a fully integrated diagnostic suite for an international airport, in the introduction he stated that all solutions must be “state of the ark.”

Saudi Arabia took the concept of the “sports city” and as the saying goes, they ran with it.

If we are going to build a new stadium, knowing the mindset of our owners, it won’t just be a stadium. It will be more. But how much more? Well for that we need to wait and see.