When Manchester City’s Abu Dhabi owners completed their takeover in 2008, they set about building a new football club.
In the short term, player acquisitions were the driving force, but when spades went into the ground and cranes rose into the sky, the club’s ascent was accelerated and its future underpinned.
More than four years into the Saudi-led ownership of Newcastle, such foundations remain largely aspirational. That is why 2026 must be the year in which the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia signal their ambition, not by promises, but by some very public investment. Those close to the ownership do not dispute that this moment has arrived.
Tuesday night’s Carabao Cup semi-final against City brings into focus the off-field disparity that still exists. Newcastle cannot cite PSR, either. There are no spending restrictions when it comes to training grounds, stadiums and regeneration projects.
The blueprint of what a major power looks like resides in the Sky Blue reality of what City have created in east Manchester. For now, on Tyneside, ‘best in class’ is a concept, not an address.
When PIF took charge in 2021, there was an expectation that the business arm of the club would move faster than its footballing legs. In truth, it is the football club that has failed to keep pace with the football team.
Part of Alexander Isak’s motivation in wanting to quit last year was concern over the speed and direction of the wider project. He is not the only player to harbour doubt.
Since 2021, Eddie Howe, his staff and his players have been the overriding reason why, from a starting point of 19th, Newcastle have disrupted the established order and twice qualified for the Champions League and won a first domestic trophy in 70 years.
Alexander Isak’s call to leave was partly due to the slow progress of the Newcastle project
Their wage outlay is currently the eighth-highest in the Premier League. They have overachieved under Howe and continue to do so. It would be wrong to look from afar and believe that this has been a club supercharged by Saudi petrodollars, in part because PSR does not allow for that.
The fuel has been football more than finance, albeit aided by a net transfer spend that is the top-flight’s sixth biggest since the takeover. The owners have supported and enabled whatever transfer outlay possible.
That, however, will only take a club so far and, of late, it feels like Newcastle have been banging their head against the Premier League’s ceiling. To reach new heights needs new ideas.
New men have arrived – CEO David Hopkinson and sporting director Ross Wilson – and that has provided an executive structure which Howe can trust and one that has united the inner workings of a club that had become fractured.
For the first time in four years, it feels like most of the right people are in most of the right places. Now, then, is the time for PIF to help those on the ground by quite literally building from it.
An announcement on a new training ground is said to be very close, and it cannot be understated how impactful that can be – not because of the facilities that one day await, but more so the messaging its construction would send. Here is a club that delivers, not delays. Here is a club for whom tomorrow promises more than today, which, to go back to January of 2022, is why Newcastle were able to persuade Kieran Trippier and Bruno Guimaraes to sign for a team rooted in the bottom three in the first place. The infrastructure pitched to them, however, remains unrealised.
Eddie Howe has overachieved since being appointed as head coach in 2021
Footballers talk, as do their agents. And, when it comes to Newcastle in recent seasons, talk has too often centred on if, and not when, the Saudis will act in accordance with their stated ambition – No1 in the world, according to chairman Yasir Al-Rumayyan.
Yet, a cramped single-storey training ground that continues as their base does not tally. This, more than a new stadium, matters to players – they use it every day, not fortnightly. There have been and are improvements but, as one source put it last year, ‘it is like putting lipstick on a pig’. Crude, but telling.
Hopkinson admits that no player is drawn to Newcastle by the training complex, and that has to change given some geographical challenges will not. Howe has delivered on the elite-level coaching, what needs to follow are elite-level surrounds. The unveiling of that project will showcase intent and provide reassurance, to supporters and players, be that current or prospective.
But also to Howe. He may never see its actual existence as Newcastle boss, but the optics of a club moving forward can help him enormously. As he said himself, it would remove a sense of ‘limbo’.
Daily Mail Sport has spoken extensively to those associated with PIF, probing as to their interest and intent. The answers are the same today as they always have been – absolute commitment and limitless aspiration.
There is, though, an acceptance that bold statements must be actioned. For while ‘careful’ and ‘gradual’ have long been the PIF buzz words when in discussion over their Newcastle investment, such caution risks the club being left behind, especially when rivals continue to innovate and accelerate.
That is why 2026 must be PIF’s year of proof, not promises.
