I played for Newcastle United over 300 times - and this is where PIF should improve
Former Newcastle United captain Rob Lee has delivered his verdict on how the club's PIF-led ownership group can improve.
Rob Lee believes Newcastle United’s majority owners PIF must improve communication with supporters and give clarity over their intentions for the club’s future.
Just under five years have passed since a £330million takeover ended Mike Ashley’s ownership and heralded the start of a what was hoped to be a bright new beginning on Tyneside. For the majority of the time that has passed, the Magpies have been on an upward trajectory with two Champions League campaigns, three top eight finishes and a Carabao Cup final win against Liverpool that brought a long-awaited end to Newcastle’s 70-year wait for major domestic silverware.
However, recent months have brought questions over PIF’s long-term intentions for the Magpies as news is awaited on a move to a new training ground and whether St James Park will be upgraded or whether a new stadium will be built to help meet increasing demand for tickets.
Lee, who was part of Kevin Keegan’s much-loved Entertainers side, stressed any doubts over what could lie ahead can be resolved with more effective communication from those at the top end of the St James Park hierarchy.
He told The Adopted Geordies podcast: “People want a bit of clarity, don’t they? How long has the training ground been going on for? How long has the ground been going on for? There just doesn’t seem to be anyone making these decisions and that puts into the fans’ minds ‘what’s going on?’ and ‘maybe they do want to get rid of it’. Maybe they want to offload a few things with what’s going on around the world. But it’s down to communication. It’s their club and if they don’t want to communicate, they don’t want to tell people, that’s down to them.”
Passionate
Lee admitted he had sympathy for Magpies supporters as they await news on the future of St James Park and the much discussed issue of a potential move to a new training ground amid talk of a new £200m complex. The former Magpies captain believes it is ‘human nature’ that supporters should expect communication and understands why fans want to see further progress.
He said: “I just think it helps everybody if people know and the fans know, especially Newcastle fans. They’re so passionate and so loyal with their club. They want to know things going on with their club. Maybe there’s a little bit of they thought when the PIF came along they’d chuck billions and billions at the whole club, the whole area, not just the football club. They haven’t done that, they’ve put money in for players. £250million, for any club to spend, was a lot of money, but maybe they don’t see at Newcastle, going around Newcastle, what we need which is Newcastle fans want to be as big as Man United and Man City and rightly so. They want a state of the art training ground. If they’re going to move the ground they want an upgraded ground, that human nature isn’t it?”
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