Thread by @shaunjlawson

THREAD: Newcastle United.

Let me start with this. No fanbase in England has been through more misery nor been more extraordinarily loyal to their club than Newcastle's. A huge amount of my respect for them comes from that.

Across Europe, probably only Schalke even compare.

Newcastle haven't won a single thing domestically since 1955, nor internationally since 1969. Yet even when they got relegated, they were still one of the 20 richest clubs in the world - they are a HUGE club.

And it's because of their potential that the Saudis have bought them.

Just as it was because of Man City's potential that their owners bought them. So many laughed at City fans and have kept laughing at Newcastle fans - but both were and are sleeping giants.

Now it's the Toon who'll stir... and I've no doubt, will mean business.

Can they ultimately win the league in, say, 5 or 6 years from now? Sure.

The remnants of Financial Fair Play will stop them turning into title contenders overnight... but their fanbase and attendances will be a major advantage. I've no doubt they'll close the gap.

So, in purely footballing terms, this is their turn. Their time. BUT...

Last night, I was browsing a Newcastle forum I know well. I was astonished to find not a single poster so much as questioning what was going on. No sense of anyone having a conscience, no bigger picture.

These are the same people who, when I joined that forum 15 years ago, railed constantly about Abramovich and called his club 'Cheatski'. But it turns out, they were just jealous. That's it.

Their football club has been bought by a terrorist state. ISIS with a flag.

And they're delighted by this! Rejoice, rejoice!

It is sick. Completely sick. Now their supporters trust writes to the very man WHO ORDERED JAMAL KHASHOGGI'S DEATH and call him 'Your Excellency'. The most nauseating communication I've ever read by any football fans.

And you know what'll happen now? As the likes of @EwanMacKenna or @MiguelDelaney will confirm, a whole bunch of Newcastle fans will now anoint themselves defenders of the Saudi realm.

They'll call anyone highlighting the monstrous abuses of the Saudi state 'anti-Newcastle'.

They'll start acting like they know better than Amnesty International and probably accuse that organisation of anti-Saudi bias.

They'll develop the most disgusting, beyond the pale siege mentality ever known among any football fanbase.

Well, here's how I feel about NUFC now.

Guys - you're welcome to make the ultimate pact with the devil. Don't let me or anyone else stop you. But you see...

- You don't get to claim to oppose racism now you've made that pact. Your club is effectively pro-racist and as anti-semite as it gets. Shame on it.

- You don't get to claim to support women's rights now you've made that pact. Your club is now as misogynistic and hateful of women as it gets.

Shame on it (and above all, on Amanda Staveley for legitimising and whitewashing these bastards).

- You don't get to claim to oppose homophobia and bigotry now you've made a pact with a state which executes and/or chemically castrates homosexuals and trans people. Your club now supports that. Shame on it.

- You don't get to weep when children anywhere are murdered. Because that's what the Saudi state, owners of your 'football club', does every single day: blowing children to pieces in Yemen, and until only last year, EXECUTING CHILDREN back home too.

When your club is owned by a terrorist state, you are a terrorist football club. Period.

A football club with not a semblance of dignity or class or basic decency or soul or honour. A public advertisement for one of the most evil regimes on planet Earth.

Wallow in it.

So many Newcastle greats and legends turning in their graves at what their club has become. And at what the supporters have allowed and are ecstatic at their club becoming.

And all to win some football matches and, before long, some Cups. My God.

To sane people, football is only ever the most important of the least important things in life.

To Newcastle fans, apparently, football is more important than life itself. More important than rape victims being executed for 'adultery'. 🤮🤮🤮

More important than ISIS too.

Most Newcastle fans, like most fully paid-up members of the human race, will have wept at what ISIS did in Paris or Manchester or London Bridge.

But they're your guys now. You're on the same side as them now. Sportswashing ISIS armers and funders.

Sportswashing those who chopped up a journalist's body and dissolved it in acid.

If this was happening in the 1930s, and Hitler had bought Newcastle, it's pretty clear to me you'd have welcomed that too. "At least he's not bloody Mike Ashley".

Then you'd have called any reports about what he was doing to the Jews 'propaganda', and rejoiced in the full employment his 'investment' delivered at a time the north-east was in the most desperate state.

ALL JUST TO WIN FOOTBALL MATCHES.

Fortunately, my club, Norwich, won't ever be important enough for an evil nation state to ever buy it.

But if owners who are this monstrous, this sadistic, this depraved, ever bought the club, I'd walk away in an instant. I, and most Norwich fans, would be devastated.

Compare and contrast the massive and entirely correct backlash from Norwich fans against the club blundering into a sponsorship deal with a bunch of misoynists in the summer - from which it quickly U-turned in shame - with Newcastle fans now.

Football isn't about winning. It's about glory. It's about a shared sense of community and passing memories down from one generation to the next.

Accordingly, I shall hereby refer to Newcastle as 'Newcastle United FFC'. Former Football Club. Because that is what you are now.

And any victory, any trophy, you go on to 'achieve' under these monsters will be the most hollow, the most soulless, the most empty in the entire history of the game.

Not that almost any of you will care. As a parable for the amorality of modern Britain, it takes some beating.