PIF TIFF
Having spent the best part of 13 years complaining about their club being owned by a famously tyrannical despot who was quite clearly using it to further his own self-serving interests, Newcastle fans were understandably delighted when Mike Ashley finally decided to sell up to a famously tyrannical despot who is quite clearly using it to further his own self-serving interests. When it was quietly pointed out that, for all his many flaws, Ashley had not to the best of anyone’s knowledge ever ordered anyone’s murder and isn’t the leader of a state where mass beheadings, the flagrant abuse of human rights and the daily bombing of innocents abroad are de rigueur, many of those fans pointed out that their club hadn’t actually been bought by Saudi Arabia, but its Public Investment Fund. What’s more, the Premier League had received “legally binding assurances” that the Saudi state would not have control of the club.
