No, Newcastle United fans shouldn’t buyout Mike Ashley

Fan owned clubs are awesome. However, there are only a handful of successful clubs that are fan owned. And while you can throw the names of Real Madrid, FC Barcelona, and Borussia Dortmund, name me another wildly successful fan owned club.

Ya can’t. Because, there isn’t.

Sure, every single club in Turkey is owned by its members, but also understand that Turkey is full of corruption and has a whole host of other issues that isn’t even football related...

They don’t count.

Another thing. The amount of money flowing into Real Madrid and Barcelona is from their unrivaled success in their league. A league that lacks serious competition from other clubs, making them the default Spanish clubs for tourists, as well as the most attended matches in Spain. Newcastle United cannot rival their attendance (largely due to their larger stadiums) as well as cannot compete with them financially as Madrid and Barcelona have high membership fees as well as large amounts of television money, and prize money from tournaments won.

Not a single Premier League club is owned by the fans. And while I’d be interested in seeing how the direction of a club could go based off of leadership solely based on club success, I don’t want Newcastle United to be the guinea pig for that project in the Premier League.

It could go extremely well, with the use of the television funds going straight into the purchases of players and other much needed improvements; or it could go terribly wrong, and the club president turns out to be just as inept at making deals as Lee Charnley.

Newcastle United has a fantastic supporter base, one that could easily keep Newcastle on stable footing. But I just don’t believe that the pieces are there for a fan owned Newcastle just yet. Not to mention the asking price is a tad high for an area that is renown for being working class.

Yeah, another thing. People in Madrid and Barcelona who have stakes in the club, aren’t exactly your working class folk. I see something more like Swansea (not the best example, but it works here) where fans purchase a stake in the club, say 15-30%, which would give fans a large say in how the club is run, the player purchases, and more.

It would give the club a chance to see how this model could work for us. But an outright buyout is not the best thing at the moment, nor even really possible.