Weather permitting, the second and final Sports Direct sign on the roof of the East Stand at St James’ Park will be taken down today — 24 hours after the first sign, to the left of where Newcastle United is spelled out in bold black letters, was removed by a team of six workers.
It would not be an overstatement to say that the club could have opened the turnstiles and supporters would have turned up to watch and cheer, such is the relief at the removal of the final symbol of Mike Ashley’s deeply unpopular tenure.
If they could have done it just before kick-off for the next home game, against Manchester City, it would have produced a roar that would have felt like a goal had been scored.
Outside St James’ Park yesterday, tucked away underneath the Milburn Stand, were three skips, one full to the brim with the Sports Direct signs that those six men had spent the day removing.
The hoardings around the perimeter of the pitch advertising Sports Direct, the company owned by Ashley, Newcastle’s former chairman, have gone. Work on removing those higher up was in progress before the north-east gales became too severe and the process was suspended.
Advertisement
By the time Ashley sold Newcastle United to a consortium funded by Saudi Arabia’s public investment fund (PIF) in October, there were said to be 107 red and blue Sports Direct signs scattered around the stadium.
It was the marital equivalent of throwing your partner’s clothes all over the lawn. Each sign that appeared — not when Ashley first bought the club in 2007, but only after his fallout with manager and Newcastle icon Kevin Keegan the next year — was provocative and antagonistic.
The symbolism of their removal is huge — a clean slate, the erasing of stagnation, the end of occupation, even.
When Newcastle fans return to a stadium finally free from Sports Direct signs — the club earned £157,000 per year in the last accounts from the advertising — there will be rejoicing. It really is that significant.
To understand this is to understand the relationship between the club’s fans and the stadium. St James’ Park is an important, imposing part of the heart of the city. It can be seen sneaking through most streets of the city centre, peering like a mischievous giant. You can’t miss it. It is just there, always, reassuring, the cathedral on the hill. The club’s only home.
Advertisement
It was something that Ashley could never change, but it was neglected — the only significant development across his 14 years of ownership was the installation of one giant television screen that was declared unsafe and caused the kick-off to be delayed for a Premier League match with Leicester City in 2014.
There is a Twitter account for a dead pigeon that has been stuck in the roof of the Gallowgate End for years. It was unloved — the ground and the pigeon — by the owners, but not by supporters.
The concern is whether a stadium, appallingly called “Frankenstein’s monster with turnstiles” in the local paper, the Evening Chronicle, on Tuesday, can satisfy the richest owners of a football club in the world.
At his first game, against Tottenham, the new Newcastle chairman, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, was afforded an ovation by fans that far outstripped that later given to Eddie Howe for his first appearance as head coach.
When the dust had settled and when he looked to the far side of the pitch, Al-Rumayyan, the governor of the PIF and a trusted lieutenant of Mohammad Bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, will have looked out to the East Stand.
Advertisement
At St James’ Park, the most striking stands are the Milburn (the main stand) and Leazes End, opened in 2000 at a cost of £50 million (after a failed attempt by the club to move to a 55,000-capacity new ground in Leazes Park).
The East Stand, significantly smaller, is a pointer to the club’s history, with the Georgian, listed terrace that runs behind it. This means, however, that there are restrictions on the scale and height of development permitted. No matter how much money the new owners have, they can’t make that part of the ground any bigger.
There was the possibility of developing the Gallowgate End, to wrap around the Leazes and Milburn, but Ashley sold that land before his exit.
It is perhaps why there has been speculation about where Newcastle could move to, if the desire is to create something similar to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, arguably now the best in Europe, rather than stay in the club’s spiritual home.
Artists’ impressions have been floating around online, relating to the development of land near the Newcastle Arena on the banks of the river, but that is a logistical non-starter.
Advertisement
Newcastle’s capacity is just under 53,000, more than enough for Juventus and Paris Saint- Germain and probably enough for Manchester City, who have expanded the Etihad once since the club was bought by Sheikh Mansour.
It is difficult to quantify what a football club is, or what indeed the Saudis bought from Ashley; a piece of history, something of regional pride, a brand name even, in the richest league in the world.
But that Newcastle’s home, St James’ Park, is a big part of it — now, and way into the future — is unquestionable, as the reaction to those signs coming down proves. Moving, at any point, would be an error that the club would never recover from.
