Staveley and Ghodoussi drove Newcastle’s takeover, only time will tell if their exits are right
It is the end of an era at St James’ Park and there have been a few of those in recent years. There has been a churn of activity since Newcastle United’s Saudi-led takeover in 2021, sleepless nights in the transfer window, recovery and expansion, a cup final, top-four, a return to the Champions Leaguefor the first time in two decades, club-record signings and some growing pains, too. And now change comes knocking for the agents of change.
Amanda Staveley and Mehrdad Ghodoussi, the figureheads of the takeover and its driving force, are to leave Newcastleand shock will ripple out across the city, even if a staging post moment has long been on the horizon. They were the married couple and businesspeople who recognised the club’s subterranean potential during the desperate days of Mike Ashley’s ownership, who were hauled along by friends to watch a match against Liverpoolin 2017 and then tried and failed three times to buy it.
In an era when belief and hope were rationed on Tyneside — Newcastle felt obliged to give away up to 10,000 part-season tickets when Rafa Benitez left at the end of his contract in 2019 — Staveley always believed, always hoped. She returned to the negotiating table, this time backed by the financial might — and controversial human rights record— of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) and this time prevailed, albeit after months of delay and limbo.
“I fell in love with the club,” the financier told The Athletic. “I fell in love with the passion, the fans. It was just this incredible club. And I knew that with investment and nurturing, it could become even better. It needed TLC. It needed a patient owner. It desperately needs investment. That day we first walked into St James’… it felt like we had come home. We knew what they needed. We wanted it, too.”
Plenty of people recoil from Saudi involvement in sport and with plenty of good reasons, but to be a Newcastle fan under Ashley was to experience a pitiless withering. The football was moribund, investment was minimal, the stadium was grubby and Benitez spoke archly about being shown plans for an updated training ground. “And after three years… they painted the walls,” he said. Matchday was a sufferance, the opposite of life-affirming. There was nothing to hold on to and thousands of supporters finally let go.
Staveley and Ghodoussi never let go, never gave up. It will always be their legacy.
And then, bang. A takeover which had been mouldering in the weeds of Premier Leaguegovernance was ratified and in her first interviews with the media, Staveley was talking about winning the Premier League within five to 10 years. She said to The Athletic:“I’ve always wondered why Alan Shearer’s statue is outside stadium land. That’s something that has to be changed and it will be.” Pretty soon, it was. A club that had turned inwards, alienating everybody, including its record goalscorer, looked up and out again.
Outside the stadium, thousands of supporters danced and sang, celebrating a long-awaited ending and giddy by the head-rush of what might come next. For years, they had craved the TLC Staveley made reference to, to believe their support was worth something beyond a cold half-existence. Theoretically, Newcastle were now the richest club in football, but they made the takeover feel curiously personal. Staveley became “Wor Mandy” and she and Ghodoussi were mobbed for autographs and selfies everywhere they went.
And, in many respects, the takeover waspersonal. PIF had an 80 per cent stake in the club, the Reuben family had 10 and Staveley had 10, but Yasir Al-Rumayyan, PIF’s governor and Newcastle chairman, was spread thinly and rarely present, and she and Ghodoussi were the ownership group’s public face.
They had no choice but to get their hands dirty, inheriting (for a short time) an administrator in Lee Charnley, the managing director, but with no executive team behind him and a club that was hollow and outsourced. It was a shell.
There were meetings with staff and players. There were mini-audits. Change was sticky; everything was deliberate and “process-driven”, with PIF needing to sign off the big decisions, but employees were encouraged to explain what they needed and asked for their advice. “What would you do in our position?” was a common question in those early interviews. Players were given an open invitation to get in touch. The glass ceiling was shattered.
A few weeks in, Steve Bruce was jettisoned and after a botched approach to Unai Emery, Eddie Howe was appointed head coach. It was a misstep-cum-masterstroke. Howe is far less emotional than Staveley, but like her he recognised something buried in the Geordie psyche and put together a brilliant team of runners and s***houses, building on the spirit already present in the dressing room. They weren’t there to be liked, they were there to compete and somehow they scraped themselves up from the foot of the Premier League.
To get there, they suffered together through January 2022, the new ownership’s first transfer window and a mammoth early test. They spent £92million on new players — a colossal amount for a club which had signed nobody not called Joe Willockover the two previous windows, working through the night. Ghodoussi lost weight. Tone-setters like Kieran Trippierand Bruno Guimaraesarrived and if it was also chaos, then it had to be. It also paid off.
Close relationships were forged that month, far more intimate than at most big clubs between boardroom and dressing room, although Newcastle were not a big club yet. Staveley was a sounding board for Howe and always available. When players endured difficult spells — and there were a few — she would pick up her phone and offer reassurance. She wished them happy birthday or congratulated them on personal achievements. After home games, they would go into the dressing room and manager’s office, not the usual way of doing things but fostering a tight-knit collective.
“They’re like my babies,” she would say of the players and the same applied to Newcastle’s women’s setup, which went full-time professional and won back-to-back promotions under her stewardship. “The women’s team has a very special part in my heart,” she told The Athletic earlier this year. “It is my biggest passion, apart from Lexi (her son, Alexander).”
They never stopped believing, stopped thinking big. Howe could be “the next (Sir) Alex Ferguson”, Ghodoussi said. “There is no reason why Newcastle in the next five years should not be a Man Cityor a Man United or a Liverpool or a Chelsea,” he added and one short, manic year after they avoided relegation, the team finished fourth in the table, which even now feels like an impossible dream.
Perhaps their other legacy will be Newcastle United 4 Paris Saint-Germain 1 and a night which rivals any in the club’s modern history, the noise of which still reverberates down the Tyne.
Yet in their interview with The Athleticin February 2022, they gave a hint at what was down the line. “We know our limitations,” Ghodoussi said. “We are business people but we are smart business people. We know we have to build a solid team at Newcastle. That’s going to drive the business and the football.”
Dan Ashworth arrived as sporting director; the fact he is now heading to Manchester Unitedspeaks of another misstep, a good fit for Brighton & Hove Albion and for England, but not quite right for a growing, flailing Newcastle which needed to bring in money as quickly as it spent it. Darren Eales arrived as chief executive from Atlanta United and commercial and sponsorship departments which had been cut to the bone under Ashley were repopulated. A structure was being built, one where there was less obvious space for investor/decision-makers.
Too many cooks? Nobody wanted that. Nobody wanted Newcastle’s astonishing progress to be complicated by uncertain power bases or confusion over the delineation of duties and, as the months went on, it increasingly pointed in this direction. Far better a clean break than a messy one. Far better a fond thank you and goodbye.
Even so, they remained hands-on. Ghodoussi oversaw £10million ($13m) of improvements at Newcastle’s Longbenton training ground — more than a coat of paint this time — while Staveley was instrumental in Anthony Gordon’s arrival from Everton. She served on Premier League committees. They used the personal touch to persuade Guimaraes to extend his contract and did the same with Joelinton, using their personal links to be persuasive when traditional talks did not work. They always thought of themselves as custodians, with Ghodoussi putting forward the case for Newcastle’s difference and arguing against ticket price rises.
In the past few weeks, Staveley was as involved as ever on Newcastle’s transfer committee and both were pivotal in the sale of Yankuba Minteh to Brighton, knowing they were not going to be around much longer but determined to leave the club in a position of strength and certainly not facing the prospect of sanctions for breaching PSR. It went down to the wire — a few more sleepless nights and a bit more chaos, just for old times’ sake — but they got there. Now it is for others to take the strain.
All of this comes at an interesting moment in the club’s development. Last season was a slog, crammed with high points but balanced by Sandro Tonali’s 10-month suspension for betting offences, a crippling injury list, Ashworth’s spell on gardening leave and an inability to spend in January when Howe most needed reinforcements. What Howe did have on his side were two huge allies amid the ownership group (three including Jamie Reuben), and so did the players. It was a layer of protection.
Without Staveley and Ghodoussi — good and natural communicators who, like Eales and Ashworth, found it difficult to wade beyond PIF’s “processes” to communicate regularly — Newcastle automatically becomes a less protected, less personal, less emotional, less connected place, where you simply trust everything will turn out all right. But in turn, Staveley and Ghodoussi offered a layer of protection to PIF and that has now gone, too.
Perhaps this was always inevitable and perhaps Newcastle becomes more streamlined as a consequence. It is no reflection on Staveley and Ghodoussi, but there is plenty of big-picture stuff still to do because although the training ground now looks and feels much better, it is still a long way short of elite level. And although there have been feasibility studies and much discussion about renovating St James’, there is a touch of Old Trafford about the stadium. It needs work and it needs love. Staveley provided the love, but it has always required PIF to push the button on infrastructure projects. It is definitively their club now. Over to them.
Ultimately, Newcastle have decided the time is right to move on from the power couple who made all of this possible, who always believed and never gave up, who persuaded fans that ambition and yearning were not dirty words. And who, to give them the credit they fully deserve, unlocked that buried potential, brought supporters home and then delivered. Only time will tell if Newcastle are right.
Staveley and Ghodoussi drove Newcastle’s takeover, only time will tell if their exits are right
It is the end of an era at St James’ Park and there have been a few of those in recent years. There has been a churn of activity since Newcastle United’s Saudi-led takeover in 2021, sleepless nights in the transfer window, recovery and expansion, a cup final, top-four, a return to the Champions Leaguefor the first time in two decades, club-record signings and some growing pains, too. And now change comes knocking for the agents of change.
Amanda Staveley and Mehrdad Ghodoussi, the figureheads of the takeover and its driving force, are to leave Newcastleand shock will ripple out across the city, even if a staging post moment has long been on the horizon. They were the married couple and businesspeople who recognised the club’s subterranean potential during the desperate days of Mike Ashley’s ownership, who were hauled along by friends to watch a match against Liverpoolin 2017 and then tried and failed three times to buy it.
In an era when belief and hope were rationed on Tyneside — Newcastle felt obliged to give away up to 10,000 part-season tickets when Rafa Benitez left at the end of his contract in 2019 — Staveley always believed, always hoped. She returned to the negotiating table, this time backed by the financial might — and controversial human rights record— of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) and this time prevailed, albeit after months of delay and limbo.
“I fell in love with the club,” the financier told The Athletic. “I fell in love with the passion, the fans. It was just this incredible club. And I knew that with investment and nurturing, it could become even better. It needed TLC. It needed a patient owner. It desperately needs investment. That day we first walked into St James’… it felt like we had come home. We knew what they needed. We wanted it, too.”
Plenty of people recoil from Saudi involvement in sport and with plenty of good reasons, but to be a Newcastle fan under Ashley was to experience a pitiless withering. The football was moribund, investment was minimal, the stadium was grubby and Benitez spoke archly about being shown plans for an updated training ground. “And after three years… they painted the walls,” he said. Matchday was a sufferance, the opposite of life-affirming. There was nothing to hold on to and thousands of supporters finally let go.
Staveley and Ghodoussi never let go, never gave up. It will always be their legacy.
And then, bang. A takeover which had been mouldering in the weeds of Premier Leaguegovernance was ratified and in her first interviews with the media, Staveley was talking about winning the Premier League within five to 10 years. She said to The Athletic:“I’ve always wondered why Alan Shearer’s statue is outside stadium land. That’s something that has to be changed and it will be.” Pretty soon, it was. A club that had turned inwards, alienating everybody, including its record goalscorer, looked up and out again.
Outside the stadium, thousands of supporters danced and sang, celebrating a long-awaited ending and giddy by the head-rush of what might come next. For years, they had craved the TLC Staveley made reference to, to believe their support was worth something beyond a cold half-existence. Theoretically, Newcastle were now the richest club in football, but they made the takeover feel curiously personal. Staveley became “Wor Mandy” and she and Ghodoussi were mobbed for autographs and selfies everywhere they went.
And, in many respects, the takeover waspersonal. PIF had an 80 per cent stake in the club, the Reuben family had 10 and Staveley had 10, but Yasir Al-Rumayyan, PIF’s governor and Newcastle chairman, was spread thinly and rarely present, and she and Ghodoussi were the ownership group’s public face.
They had no choice but to get their hands dirty, inheriting (for a short time) an administrator in Lee Charnley, the managing director, but with no executive team behind him and a club that was hollow and outsourced. It was a shell.
There were meetings with staff and players. There were mini-audits. Change was sticky; everything was deliberate and “process-driven”, with PIF needing to sign off the big decisions, but employees were encouraged to explain what they needed and asked for their advice. “What would you do in our position?” was a common question in those early interviews. Players were given an open invitation to get in touch. The glass ceiling was shattered.
A few weeks in, Steve Bruce was jettisoned and after a botched approach to Unai Emery, Eddie Howe was appointed head coach. It was a misstep-cum-masterstroke. Howe is far less emotional than Staveley, but like her he recognised something buried in the Geordie psyche and put together a brilliant team of runners and s***houses, building on the spirit already present in the dressing room. They weren’t there to be liked, they were there to compete and somehow they scraped themselves up from the foot of the Premier League.
To get there, they suffered together through January 2022, the new ownership’s first transfer window and a mammoth early test. They spent £92million on new players — a colossal amount for a club which had signed nobody not called Joe Willockover the two previous windows, working through the night. Ghodoussi lost weight. Tone-setters like Kieran Trippierand Bruno Guimaraesarrived and if it was also chaos, then it had to be. It also paid off.
Close relationships were forged that month, far more intimate than at most big clubs between boardroom and dressing room, although Newcastle were not a big club yet. Staveley was a sounding board for Howe and always available. When players endured difficult spells — and there were a few — she would pick up her phone and offer reassurance. She wished them happy birthday or congratulated them on personal achievements. After home games, they would go into the dressing room and manager’s office, not the usual way of doing things but fostering a tight-knit collective.
“They’re like my babies,” she would say of the players and the same applied to Newcastle’s women’s setup, which went full-time professional and won back-to-back promotions under her stewardship. “The women’s team has a very special part in my heart,” she told The Athletic earlier this year. “It is my biggest passion, apart from Lexi (her son, Alexander).”
They never stopped believing, stopped thinking big. Howe could be “the next (Sir) Alex Ferguson”, Ghodoussi said. “There is no reason why Newcastle in the next five years should not be a Man Cityor a Man United or a Liverpool or a Chelsea,” he added and one short, manic year after they avoided relegation, the team finished fourth in the table, which even now feels like an impossible dream.
Perhaps their other legacy will be Newcastle United 4 Paris Saint-Germain 1 and a night which rivals any in the club’s modern history, the noise of which still reverberates down the Tyne.
Yet in their interview with The Athleticin February 2022, they gave a hint at what was down the line. “We know our limitations,” Ghodoussi said. “We are business people but we are smart business people. We know we have to build a solid team at Newcastle. That’s going to drive the business and the football.”
Dan Ashworth arrived as sporting director; the fact he is now heading to Manchester Unitedspeaks of another misstep, a good fit for Brighton & Hove Albion and for England, but not quite right for a growing, flailing Newcastle which needed to bring in money as quickly as it spent it. Darren Eales arrived as chief executive from Atlanta United and commercial and sponsorship departments which had been cut to the bone under Ashley were repopulated. A structure was being built, one where there was less obvious space for investor/decision-makers.
Too many cooks? Nobody wanted that. Nobody wanted Newcastle’s astonishing progress to be complicated by uncertain power bases or confusion over the delineation of duties and, as the months went on, it increasingly pointed in this direction. Far better a clean break than a messy one. Far better a fond thank you and goodbye.
Even so, they remained hands-on. Ghodoussi oversaw £10million ($13m) of improvements at Newcastle’s Longbenton training ground — more than a coat of paint this time — while Staveley was instrumental in Anthony Gordon’s arrival from Everton. She served on Premier League committees. They used the personal touch to persuade Guimaraes to extend his contract and did the same with Joelinton, using their personal links to be persuasive when traditional talks did not work. They always thought of themselves as custodians, with Ghodoussi putting forward the case for Newcastle’s difference and arguing against ticket price rises.
In the past few weeks, Staveley was as involved as ever on Newcastle’s transfer committee and both were pivotal in the sale of Yankuba Minteh to Brighton, knowing they were not going to be around much longer but determined to leave the club in a position of strength and certainly not facing the prospect of sanctions for breaching PSR. It went down to the wire — a few more sleepless nights and a bit more chaos, just for old times’ sake — but they got there. Now it is for others to take the strain.
All of this comes at an interesting moment in the club’s development. Last season was a slog, crammed with high points but balanced by Sandro Tonali’s 10-month suspension for betting offences, a crippling injury list, Ashworth’s spell on gardening leave and an inability to spend in January when Howe most needed reinforcements. What Howe did have on his side were two huge allies amid the ownership group (three including Jamie Reuben), and so did the players. It was a layer of protection.
Without Staveley and Ghodoussi — good and natural communicators who, like Eales and Ashworth, found it difficult to wade beyond PIF’s “processes” to communicate regularly — Newcastle automatically becomes a less protected, less personal, less emotional, less connected place, where you simply trust everything will turn out all right. But in turn, Staveley and Ghodoussi offered a layer of protection to PIF and that has now gone, too.
Perhaps this was always inevitable and perhaps Newcastle becomes more streamlined as a consequence. It is no reflection on Staveley and Ghodoussi, but there is plenty of big-picture stuff still to do because although the training ground now looks and feels much better, it is still a long way short of elite level. And although there have been feasibility studies and much discussion about renovating St James’, there is a touch of Old Trafford about the stadium. It needs work and it needs love. Staveley provided the love, but it has always required PIF to push the button on infrastructure projects. It is definitively their club now. Over to them.
Ultimately, Newcastle have decided the time is right to move on from the power couple who made all of this possible, who always believed and never gave up, who persuaded fans that ambition and yearning were not dirty words. And who, to give them the credit they fully deserve, unlocked that buried potential, brought supporters home and then delivered. Only time will tell if Newcastle are right.