Is the Newcastle United Supporters Trust full of well-intentioned dreamers or serious revolutionaries? Chief Sports Writer Luke Edwards expects to know more about their ambitions by the end of the week.
It is impossible not to be impressed by the idea of a Newcastle United Football Club run by supporters for supporters , yet it is far easier to doubt it is a viable proposition.
The aims of the Newcastle United Supporters Trust are far more than just commendable, they are truly remarkable; visionary, revolutionary and brave.
They do not just have a plan to make Newcastle United a democratically run football club, they have a plan of action promising far more than just bold words.
The North East has a long and proud tradition of left wing politics – of collective bargaining and the strength of the trade union movement.
The NUST has been forged in those fires by people who do not believe socialist principles died in this country with New Labour and the election of Tony Blair.
They have made a clear declaration of intent with the ‘Yes We Can’ campaign which aims, with the help of local businesses and wealthy individual investors, to raise the funds required to lead a fans buy out with the objective of creating a club where the chairman and board are elected by the supporters .
Some have called the business model a Barcelona-on-the-Tyne, where mismanagement and personal interest are replaced in the boardroom by a collective will to run a business which always has the best interests of the club and supporters at heart. Where there are elections there will be culpability and transparency, a football club where decisions are taken by people who have been put in their positions of power by those who make the football club what it is – the fans.
According to the NUST, more than 6,000 people have pledged money to the cause, 4,000 people pledging a minimum of £1,500 and another 2,000 who have offered £25,000 of pension funds.
It is an idealistic dream. As such, it is an ambition which can easily be written off as unrealistic by sceptics who simply can not believe the established order can be shifted, the natural order of things turned on its head in such sensational fashion.
Martin Luther King had a dream. He may have died long before it became a reality, but it was his brave vision which sent the wheels of change in motion, ending black segregation and eventually paving the way for Barack Obama (pictured left) to become America’s first black president – and it is no coincidence the ‘Yes We Can’ slogan is taken from his campaign trail.
Had Mahatma Ghandi merely thought about the idea of an India free of British control, the country may have waited another 50 years for independence and could still be a colony run from London for the good of Britain’s national interest.
But for every Luther King and Ghandi there is a discredited dreamer, a revolutionary whose revolution failed, its ideology washed away by the tide of popular public opinion. That is the size of the task NUST have taken on.
There is no tradition of democratically elected boards in English football, but change will only come when traditions have been broken. The leaders of NUST firmly believe they can break them, but they still have to convince the rest of the club’s fanbase their gallant objective is an achievable one. As things stand, football clubs are kingdoms run on the patronage of the owner who may, or may not, make money out of his endeavour depending on success on the pitch.
Like most kings, some rule for the good of the people, others are guilty of tyranny and mis-government, but they are still the ones who have the power and the money to hold on to it.
Most owners do not make any money.
Mike Ashley does not make any directly out of Newcastle United . In fact, it costs him millions to retain control of a football club in a city where he is not wanted. Managing director Derek Llambias makes money as an employee as he is paid an annual wage, but Newcastle is no longer a public company and there are no dividends paid to shareholders as there were in the days of Sir John Hall and Freddie Shepherd.
This month alone, Chelsea’s billionaire owner Roman Abramovich effectively wrote off more than £300m of debt, while Manchester City’s oil-rich Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan converted £305m of loans into equity as losses at Eastlands grew to £92.6 million in 2008.
That is the cost of competing at the head of English football’s top table, so how can a Supporters Trust not only raise the money to buy United , but also have enough to cover the running costs, let alone investment for players and so on? Where hundreds of millions are invested to create teams to challenge for silverware, will Newcastle ever have enough financial muscle to fight for honours under this sort of leadership?
These are literally the multi-million-pound questions which need to be answered before NUST can push forward on to the next stage of its campaign and eventually to takeover talks with a regime they have so far refused to meet.
Those answers, so far, have not been given with any degree of proof.
As a result, there are plenty of people who doubt the ‘Yes We Can’ campaign will succeed as anything more than a pressure group, a sensible voice for supporters to express their concerns about those who run the club in their name. But could that change this week when NUST are due to unveil some of the significant individual investors who are willing to put up millions – not just thousands – of pounds to facilitate the takeover?
And what of the local businesses who have also pledged their support for a citywide takeover of its most famous and arguably most important institution?
With more than 6,000 individuals already pledging their support – although NUST have been advised as many as 50% of these will fail to come up with the money by their own financial advisors – the ball is rolling, but does it have the momentum to reach the top of the mountain they are trying to scale?
Nobody can fault the idea and nobody can criticise the way NUST have tried to make it happen, but can they convince enough people it will work in practice? Only then does a dream have a shot at reality.
REVOLUTIONARY ROAD The dream may be real for the fan of wealthy Manchester City, holding a fake £500 note featuring the face of Sheikh Mansour, left, or those of European champions Barcelona, above, who have 170,000 registered members, but the Newcastle United Supporters Trust now need to persuade thousands of Magpies fans that theirs is credible as they look to buy out current owner Mike Ashley, far left. Top, Bill Corcoran, Tony Stephenson and Steve Hastie promote the NUST; also pictured, Barack Obama, from whom NUST adopted the ‘Yes We Can’ slogan.
