Thread by @garius

This.

I don't want to see Newcastle United turned into another reputation booster for a foreign state with a dubious human rights record.

You can't be a 'working class club' owned by a state that provides no rights for workers.

https://twitter.com/PhilippeAuclair/status/1446232545155297281

I've taken the piss out of Newcastle United plenty over the years, like many fans of other Prem clubs.

But it's ALWAYS been with an undertone of respect for what that club means to Newcastle, it's history and the passion of its fans.

The Saudi takeover is a slow death of that.

I get why so many fans want it. It's been SHIT being a Newcastle United fan for years. Been hard from the outside watching Ashley create a status quo of self-funding crapness.

But it's swapping that for a short term high, at the cost of ANY future as a community club.

Mike Ashley's big problem was always how powerful United's links to Newcastle, and to the fans, were.

He never had the money to ignore those two relationships entirely, and also kinda wanted their love.

That hold is gone. The Saudis have the money. And they don't give a shit.

Because guess what: it's hard enough forcing out an unpopular owner when they're a person. But it's impossible to do when they're a nation-state.

Once they get their hooks in, you're done.

So any Newcastle United fan who doesn't want this: you have my sympathy and respect. You're being thrown out of the pan into a blazing fire.

Others: I legit hope you get some fun football to watch.

But don't come at me with the community club stuff in future. You're not anymore

For those here (and elsewhere) with the sniffy "well its just football. Saudis do worse" stuff.

Football is, at heart, about community and identity. That's why people fall in love with it. It's why they care. Even if they don't realise that's why.

The last thirty years have seen a slow process of the monetisation of that feeling of community and identity.

Some of the effects of that have been good. But the snowball effect of it, over time, has been bad.

At top flight level, at some point in the last decades we passed, perhaps without realising it, a tipping point. The point at which the pressures on the self-generating and renewing element of that community feel disappeared for a lot of top clubs.

What I mean by that, is that it is NOT POSSIBLE to be a local kid who goes regularly to top flight games.

At that point, the community and identity become abstract. Clubs and players stop being real world things and people to the subsequent generation of fans. They're products.

And we're already seeing the consequences of that in the shitty treatment of player on social media and elsewhere. And in the gradual loss of the cohesive elements of community in top flight football that could make it a positive thing, not a mob.

The club's know this. They know that winning back, and building back, that human connection is hard. More critically, they also know that it would impact their profit line.

S'why they have no intention of doing it.

Easier to focus on product and brand fans. Hence Superleague.

So yes. Forgive me if I do a big thread about watching the light of one of the few remaining legit community clubs in the top flight blink out.

I do care that the Saudis chop up journalists.

But I care about this too. Because it is the slow death of football, a community I love

And every time something like this happens, I'm reminded of the fact that I have been to just one Arsenal game in the last four years, and struggle to get passionate about watching any top flight football anymore.

And that is a gap in my heart I don't want to see Geordies have.

I'm super lucky. I've got Orient. Everything I lost at top flight, I at least still have there.

I can still get part of my community fix elsewhere, even if my heart is incomplete.

Newcastle fans are different. One city. One club. That's about to become a weakness not a strength

Oh, and as a final BBC TV style note:

If you, or someone you know, has experienced the pain or loss of seeing your local top-flight club become a brand, then do swing by and join us at Orient if you're in London.

All the community, and plenty of sympathy from other two-teamers!