Brighton host Newcastle whose owners executed 81 men in one day

Newcastle United have had to introduce a special edition kit for the trip to Brighton because their home, away and third choice shirts all clash with the Albion.

A chap in a WhatsApp group I am part of had a novel solution to the problem. Why don’t they take 20 of their white and green Saudi Arabia inspired away kits and use them to mop up the blood of the next critical journalist Mohammed bin Salman decides to lure to a consulate, murder and dismember?

Or how about use them to clean the mess left behind when Newcastle’s owners kill 81 men in a single afternoon of mass executions, as happened on March 12th?

The white kit becomes stained red with blood, there is no clash with the Albion and the Saudis can concentrate on issues more pressing than designing a new Newcastle shirt. Like civil war in Yemen which had killed an estimated 337,000 people at the end of 2021.

Saudi Arabia bought Newcastle last year via their Public Investment Fund for the purposes of making people forget about assassinations, murders, human rights abuses and war.

Instead, the name Saudi Arabia would be associated with a football club transformed, who win trophies and play beautiful football.

Like how Abu Dhabi in 2022 conjures images of Pep Guardiola, Kevin De Bruyne and Premier League record breakers rather than a country where modern day slavery exists and being LGBTQ+ is a crime punishable by death.

The good news is that the Saudi Sportswashing of Newcastle has so far not really worked as well as the Public Investment Fund would have liked.

Toon fans have fallen for it hook, liner and sinker. You now see Saudi flags waved at Newcastle games, whilst some of their supporters jump to the defence of this tyrannical regime at the smallest piece of criticism.

The wider public have not been so easily fooled. Football fans still talk about Jamal Khashoggi and the appalling human rights record of Saudi Arabia in conjunction with Newcastle.

For an idea of how much this angers Saudi Arabia, look at their reaction to the infamous Crystal Palace banner. Newcastle reported it to the Met Police as being racist in an attempt to stifle criticism of their owners.

The Met threw out the complaint very quickly under freedom of speech and Palace for their part backed their supporters. It is not racist to highlight humans rights abuses carried out in nations whose leaders now own Premier League football clubs; something that seems rather obvious.

Yet other top flight clubs might have easily been swayed by the power and money that comes from oil and instead aided the sportswashing efforts by bending into their demands and selling out their own supporters. Well played Palace for not being bullied.

How long the football world can resist the sportswashing of Newcastle remains to be seen, however. When the Toon start winning trophies, there is a danger that Saudi Arabia will have plaudits bestowed upon it for awaking a sleeping giant and delivering a first English title to Tyneside in nearly 100 years.

Imagine if they take the coveted crown of European Champions before City, the one trophy Sheikh Mansour is desperate to get his hands on?

Annoyingly, Newcastle and their current slow approach is eminently sensible. Most fans of other football clubs had hoped the new owners would sweep in, throw silly money at mercenary players, sack managers every few months and turn St James’ Park into a total circus.

When Abu Dhabi oil money arrived at the Etihad Stadium and City, it went out and signed Robinho for £32 million. And shortly afterwards, City were eliminated from the League Cup at Withdean by a Brighton side who had lost 1-0 to nine man Walsall four days earlier.

There has been no such nonsense from Newcastle. They instead appear to be building from the bottom, putting in place structures that can sustain long-term irsuccess.

One of the first acts of the new owners was to poach Dan Ashworth from the Albion. Ashworth did a superb job on a shoestring budget by Premier League standards in turning Brighton’s recruitment and academy into a profit-making conveyor belt of talent.

He is one of the best technical directors in the world. For the Toon to prioritise him over marquee signings was very shrewd. It is scary to think what Ashworth could do at a club with the potential of Newcastle and unlimited funds, given what he achieved at Brighton.

The Toon’s work in the transfer market has followed a similar slow build plan. Good, solid Premier League professionals like Chris Wood and Dan Burn have been added to their squad in the past two transfer windows.

Do you see a pattern developing here? They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, in which case the Albion should be mighty flattered that the richest football club in the world have decided it is Brighton they want to be like.

Burn for £13 million represented an excellent deal for all parties when it was done in January. The Albion received a huge fee for a player signed for £3.5 million three years earlier with only 18 months left on his contract.

Newcastle got a capable defender to help them in their battle against relegation. And Burn was presented with the unexpected opportunity to live the dream of playing for his hometown club.

He should get a warm round of applause from the Amex crowd on his first return to Brighton as a Newcastle player.

Burn was part of a signing spree which made the Toon the biggest spenders in Europe during the January transfer window. That enabled Eddie Howe to carry them out of the bottom three and all the way to a finishing position of 11th.

Newcastle will be expected to carry on where they left off in 2022-23. City, Liverpool, Chelsea, Spurs and Arsenal would appear to have the top five places sewn up but there is no reason why the Toon cannot finish the best of the rest as high as sixth.

That would represent good progress and put them in a position to strengthen further next summer, building slowly towards Champions League football and a tilt at silverware. Like we said, annoyingly sensible.

A routine 2-0 win on the opening day over newly promoted Nottingham Forest got their season started. Brighton were much more impressive in coming away with a 2-1 victory from Manchester United, meaning that this is a clash of two teams brimming with confidence.

Playing against Newcastle used to guarantee goals and points for Brighton. Before March’s 2-1 defeat at St James’ Park, the Albion were undefeated in nine Premier League matches with the Toon. Newcastle had breached the Seagulls defence only once.

If any manager was going to transform the Magpies’ wretched record against Brighton, it was Smug Eddie. From when the Albion first encountered him as Plucky Little Bournemouth manager in 2010, he has had a supernatural hold over Brighton.

Gus Poyet He Who Must Not Be Named’s League One winners took just one point from Bournemouth in that 2010-11 title season. Howe has suffered only two defeats to the Albion in his managerial career, spanning both spells with the Cherries, Burnley and now Newcastle.

Graham Potter was at least responsible for one of those Seagulls victories, overseeing a 2-0 Amex win against Bournemouth in December 2019 when Alireza Jahanbakhsh and Aaron Mooy were on the scoresheet.

Who knows what will happen this time around? Brighton v Newcastle is one of those games where it is genuinely impossible to predict an outcome, nobody being entirely sure just how good either of these teams are.

That should make for an exciting afternoon of football. And no matter what the result, we can be thankful that Brighton & Hove Albion are not used as a sportswashing machine for billionaire human rights abusers.