IF you’re trying to assess whether the last three years of Saudi Arabian ownership at Newcastle United have been a success, the key starting point is determining what the club’s ambition should be.

Under Mike Ashley, ambition was a dirty word. Former manager Steve Bruce summed things up best when he admitted that success was “keeping things ticking over”. Scramble above the Premier League relegation zone to ensure that, in the following season, you can try to scramble above the Premier League relegation zone again. Newcastle was a club that was dying from the inside. Clearly, something had to change.

That change was the £300m buyout overseen by Amanda Staveley and bankrolled by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF). Immediately, sights were reset. Staveley talked bullishly of “winning the Premier League within five years” during the series of interviews she conducted on the evening after the successful takeover was confirmed. Newcastle’s chairman, Yasir al-Rumayyan, has subsequently spelled out an aim to be the “number one club in the world”.

If Ashley’s inability to grasp Newcastle’s potential represents the absolute baseline of where the club’s ambition should be, then Staveley and al-Rumayyan’s comments are at the other end of the scale, set so high to effectively render themunachievable. The club should be aiming to be somewhere in between, but delivering a verdict on how the last three years have gone is contingent on whether you feel goals should be set closer to the Ashley end of the scale or the al-Rumayyan one.

If you regard drawing a line under the Ashley era and beginning a process of regeneration and rebuilding as a success, then the last three years have ticked all the boxes. If, however, you feel the ‘new’ Newcastle should be bridging the gap to the likes of Manchester City and Arsenal and joining the elite group of Europe’s biggest clubs, it could instead be deemed as a failure. Once again, the fairest assessment probably lies somewhere in between. Giant strides have been taken, but the desired end point still feels an awfully long way away.

That is not to downplay the undoubted progress that has been made since the final game of the Ashley era ended in a 2-1 defeat at Wolves. The Newcastle team that day featured Karl Darlow, Javier Manquillo, Ciaran Clark and Federico Fernandez. Jeff Hendrick and Dwight Gayle came off the bench. There are survivors from the starting XI – Sean Longstaff, Joe Willock and Joelinton – but it is impossible to deny that the last three years have witnessed a level of investment into the playing squad that would have been unthinkable under Ashley.

Yes, questions have rightly been asked about some of the recruitment decisions made by the current regime, but the arrival of the likes of Sven Botman, Bruno Guimaraes, Sandro Tonali and Alexander Isak would have been unthinkable under the former ownership model. Newcastle’s current squad is of a much higher quality than it would have been had the takeover not occurred, with results having improved to reflect that. In the two seasons under Ashley prior to the takeover, Newcastle finished 13th and 16th. Forget the disrupted 2021-22 season, in which Eddie Howe’s overriding priority on his appointment was to secure Premier League survival, and in the two full seasons under PIF control since, Newcastle have finished fourth and sixth. They have also played in the Champions League and appeared in a Carabao Cup final at Wembley. Sometimes, it is easy to forget just how stark the improvement has been.

There have been other, less empirically-obvious, positive changes, not least when it has come to repairing the relationship between club and supporters that had become so fractured under Ashley. Back then, club and fanbase were effectively at war, with the matchday atmosphere at St James’ Park fluctuating between a toxic mix of anger and apathy.

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From the moment the current ownership group arrived on Tyneside, the mood around the club was transformed. They were always going to be pushing against an open door, but the PIF-led hierarchy deserve considerable credit for the way in which they have largely maintained the feelgood factor and attempted to keep the fanbase on board. There have been hiccups along the way – the allocation of tickets, both at home and away, has become a major bone of contention, while the matchday experience at St James’ has not quite been upgraded in quite the way that was promised – but even the most critical of supporters would have to concede that the club continues to feel very different to the one that Ashley bequeathed back in 2021.

Commercial revenues are beginning to rise, albeit from an extremely low base, the return of adidas as kit suppliers has been extremely well received and there has been a £10m upgrade of the training ground at Darsley Park. So far, so good. But is that sufficient?

In the last 12 months, in particular, it has felt that progress has stalled. Or, to put it another way, that the realities of the world in which Newcastle are having to operate have increasingly begun to hit home. Qualifying for the Champions League in the first full season under the PIF suggested that an extremely rapid rate of upward mobility was possible. The last year or so has led to a more realistic view on what is actually possible.

Clearly, the Premier League’s Profit and Sustainability rules (PSR) have been the major factor in reining in Newcastle’s ambition, with the limits on what can be spent on transfer fees and wages acting as an unwelcome brake on the club’s aspirations. Senior sources insist the PIF were always fully aware of what PSR would mean, but it still feels as though the impact of the rules has come as something of a surprise. It certainly felt like that in the summer when Newcastle were scrambling to sell Elliot Anderson and Yankuba Minteh to ensure they remained compliant.

Could the current owners have been more aggressive in testing or challenging the rules, in the manner of a Manchester City? The £25m-a-season shirt sponsorship deal with Sela seems cheap given that it was signed at a time when Newcastle were preparing to return to the Champions League. Allan Saint-Maximin remains the only player the Magpies have sold to Saudi Arabia. Not wanting to break the rules is one thing; not exploiting every permissible advantage that is open to you is perhaps another.

What about the really big decisions that could help transform Newcastle’s fortunes? The aforementioned £10m worth of improvements at the training ground was a facelift at a time when major surgery was surely required. There has been talk of land near Newcastle Racecourse, owned by the Reubens, being earmarked for a new training complex. At the moment, though, it remains just talk.

Similarly, the huge call over the future of St James’ Park has been kicked down the road, to the start of next year at the earliest. Will Newcastle look to redevelop their existing stadium, potentially raising the capacity to around 70,000 at a cost of up to £1bn? Or would they prefer to build a brand-new stadium, ideally still in the centre of the city, but potentially much further out if planning rules or cost dictate?

That remains an unanswered conundrum, and it feeds into the one question that, above all others, will determine how the next three years look. Are the PIF, and by association, the wider Saudi state, still as committed to Newcastle as they were when they signed the deal to take charge? Do they still regard the club as the jewel in their sporting crown? Or, with Cristiano Ronaldo playing in the Saudi league, the 2034 World Cup seemingly certain to be held in Saudi Arabia, world-title fights regularly being staged in the kingdom and LIV Golf going from strength to strength, has their interest in owning a Premier League club waned?

The message from the very top at St James’ Park is that al-Rumayyan, the rest of the PIF and the wider hierarchy in Saudi Arabia remain as committed as ever. They are desperate for Newcastle to succeed, and are willing to remain patient as the club continues to grow. That augurs well, but they will have to deliver. A lot has happened in the last three years, yet the journey has only really just begun.