Newcastle United’s long-awaited takeover by the Saudis is off.

The Magpies won’t be the richest club in world football anytime soon, and the dreams of appointing Mauricio Pochettino to lead a team of superstars in the north-east seems to have vanished.

The Toon Army have had plenty of ideas on what the team would look like post-takeover and how much they would have spent, but now we have a much clearer picture of how much money the Saudis were willing to pump in if they had taken over from Mike Ashley.

What’s been said then?

George Caulkin was relaying a conversation he’d had with Amanda Staveley on the latest edition of the Pod on the Tyne podcast, and she had told him exactly how much the consortium were planning to spend post-takeover.

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Unfortunately, it won’t happen now, but it’s certainly still interesting to find out just how much investment the club have missed out on.

“The pity is that everything that Staveley and the group have said is exactly what the fans wanted to hear. Whether that’s the emotion attached to the club and their feelings towards it." Caulkin said (Pod on the Tyne 31/6/20 12:30)

“Again, Staveley said that 250 million quid was earmarked to improving the team and the club over the first couple of years, and that there were big plans for PIF investing in the city and the region, including housing and all that sort of stuff and that’s been lost.”

Devastating

The Saudi takeover is a highly controversial topic for a number of reasons, but losing out on £250m being put into your team as well as investment into the surrounding area is a big loss for both the club and the city.

Caulkin would go on to talk about the economic problems the region faces in the post-pandemic era, and he talks about how this injection of money into the area could have alleviated a number of worries for locals, and that’s probably the saddest thing to come out of all this.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter all that much if Kylian Mbappe or Joelinton line up for Newcastle, fans will still turn out in their droves because the club is the heartbeat of the city, but to miss out on a potential chance for gentrification in an area that needs it is a massive shame.