On a grey Wednesday at Newcastle United’s Little Benton training ground, Eddie Howe settled into his chair to face the inevitable questions about Saudi Arabia.
Four thousand miles away Boris Johnson had the red carpet rolled out for him in Riyadh as his ministers wrestled with many of the same questions about forging an alliance with a nation that beheaded 81 people in a single grim day earlier this month.
Welcome to the Premier League, 2022. It is a complicated, grim business at times but in that respect it neatly mirrors British life.
Howe is obviously compromised in some ways. Unable to offer a condemnation of the worst aspects of the Saudi regime – which the Premier League ruled last year is not the de facto owner of Newcastle, to widespread scepticism – he has a difficult line to tread.
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“I understand questions have to be asked,” Howe said after a short respite running through the list of injuries his team is contending with ahead of Thursday’s trip to Everton.
“I have no problem with that. But my specialist subject is football. As soon as I deviate from that into an area I don’t feel qualified to have an opinion I get into dangerous ground. I’m best sticking to preparing a team for Everton.”
That he does that well is beyond doubt. Newcastle’s revival under his astute tutelage is a fine story, but after what has unfolded at Chelsea it has been overshadowed – for the moment – by wider questions of the club’s majority owners, the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia.
Johnson’s visit to the region was proof that talk of sanctioning of the PIF is fanciful. But Roman Abramovich found himself at the centre of a sudden, dramatic shift in the geopolitical situation. In these uncertain times, football fans had better get used to the news bulletins blurring lines with the sport ones.
Howe, for his part, promised to read up more thoroughly on issues around the Saudi regime in the future. He patiently answered a question about whether the dressing room was buzzing with talk of Yemen or Houthi rebels. Importantly, he accepted the issue represented a valid line of questioning. There was no stepping in to move the press conference back to football.
“I was a footballer with a slight difference,” he admitted.
“I got on the team bus aged 19 with a copy of The Times under my arm. I got strange looks from my teammates. But I came from a family where things were pushed towards me and I was interested in world politics at that stage.
“But having time on my hands as a football manager is difficult, so it’s gone out my life slightly. I will have to dedicate more time to it, though. Anyone who knows me will tell you I’m job obsessed – It’s an understatement actually.
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“In the modern world part of my job is to know what’s going on around the world and I’m reading up on that. I respect Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher’s opinion and I get on well with them. I’ve no issue with what they said. But ultimately it’s my right to say what I need to say.”
That is an argument that will find favour on Tyneside, where the promise of regional investment to go with the obvious funds being ploughed into the club really matter.
The idea that Newcastle fans aren’t engaging with the issues is a reductionist one. That they have an issue with the line of questioning is beyond doubt and few believe Howe is the right man to answer questions on Saudi human rights.
But dig deeper and there is a complicated landscape at play, one that reflects the conflict many fans feel about a sport that has been taken away from the ordinary supporter.
An attempt a year ago by the Newcastle supporters’ trust to raise funds to buy a portion of the club raised hundreds of thousands of pounds in a few months. Had there been a mechanism to trigger fan ownership and keep the club competitive, Tyneside would have been the perfect place to conduct that experiment. They received little support from football authorities who have ridden the gravy train that foreign and state investment in the game has brought.
To that end the vast majority welcomed the buyout that extricated the club from the icy grip of Mike Ashley, who had allowed Newcastle to wither on the vine. That is a different thing from not engaging, and that should be acknowledged.
Popular fan site nufc.com argued over the weekend that supporters should revive the slogan of “supporting the team and not the regime” in their attitude to the owners. Their match report from Chelsea said black and white or Brazilian flags – the latter to welcome record signing Bruno Guimaeres or revived star Joelinton – should be taken to games rather than those of Saudi Arabia.
“Before I took the job I looked at it as the club, the players, the support base,” Howe said on Wednesday.
“You then meet the people behind the scenes – Amanda (Staveley), Mehrdad (Ghodoussi), Yasir (Al-Rummayan) – brilliant people who I’ve got a good relationship with. A lot of trust has been built between us.
“The club of course is owned by people who the Premier League allowed to own a football club. So from my side that’s as far as it went and I’ve reviewed my decision based on the people I’ve met.
“I’m very proud to represent this football club.”
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