Newcastle United need an owner with funds

When Peter Kenyon was first announced as a potential buyer of Newcastle United, I was pretty ecstatic. He had turned Manchester United into a billion dollar powerhouse brand. He was responsible for multiple signings which assisted Sir Alex Ferguson in making Manchester United the dominant force of Premier League football in the early 2000s.

But it was all with someone else’s money.

Owning a football club, and running it as CEO are two completely different things. It’s amazing what I can do with someone else’s money. Trust me. It’s different when it comes to spending my own.

Two things have become crystal clear about Peter Kenyon throughout these discussions.

1. Peter Kenyon does not have the money himself to fund a move, he’s merely going to end up being the face of the club, and lead the club much in the same capacity he did while at Manchester United.
2. His consortium can’t muster up the funds for a full purchase.

These two things alone are enough to make me question Peter Kenyon and his group’s potential ownership. If they can barely muster the funds to purchase Newcastle United, how can we trust them to be able to fund transfer moves that would break Michael Owen’s Newcastle record? What about paying higher wages to players who demand it?

How will this ownership group cope with the growing influence of money in football if they can’t even manage to get what is a pretty poultry sum on a larger scale. They’re not just buying Newcastle United for £300m, they’re buying players for £20-25m, and they’re paying wages that could equate to £5m a year. Sure they can use the television money that Mike Ashley has failed to hand over to Rafa Benitez, but that alone will not be enough in the short term.

I like Peter Kenyon. I like where his leadership can take Newcastle United in terms of global marketing, and value. But his consortium seems to lack the one thing needed to get us there.

Money.