Why the Saudi takeover of Newcastle could spell trouble for Tottenham

While their own stadium is handed over to a sporting behemoth of the West, Tottenham face a trip north this weekend to have the dubious pleasure of being the first visitors to a Newcastle side newly monied by the East.

Such is the geopolitical playing field that the Premier League has become, the owners of Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United — all American billionaires with heavyweight US franchises — were said to be central figures in a futile, League-wide opposition to the arrival on Tyneside of Saudi Arabia and its Public Investment Fund.

As was Daniel Levy.

Whatever the wider implications of the Saudi takeover, the potential advent of another super-rich Premier League super club is bad news for the embattled Spurs chairman.

He has been on the back foot ever since his part in the doomed European Super League, the Tottenham Hotspur Supporters’ Trust’s issuing their latest rebuke of the board just last week as Amanda Staveley and Co were picking up the keys to St James’ Park.

The irony, of course, is that the ESL’s pull-the-ladder-up-Jack attempt to form an elite closed shop (of which Spurs, arguably, did not deserve to be a part) was designed to safeguard the established order and prevent exactly the kind of disruptive rise of which Newcastle fans are now dreaming.

Instead, the reality for Levy is that Sunday’s fixture, which a fortnight ago seemed a near-gimme against a team in turmoil, now looks like a meeting between two clubs who could, before long, be more intimate rivals, playing for the same prizes, shopping in the same stores.

Talk of an imminent Toon title challenge is surely fanciful — one bookmaker offered 12/1 that they win the top flight within five years, a staggeringly short price given they may not even be in the division next season.

But while teams such as Chelsea and Manchester City may be able to sleep relatively easily for now, those in the bracket below the elite — Arsenal and Tottenham in particular — will be unnerved by the arrival of another prospective European challenger, having both failed to even qualify for Uefa’s second-tier tournament this season.

Spurs were in direct competition with the new money when City made their own free-spending surge a decade ago, both clubs seeking to take advantage of Liverpool’s decline to break into what had been a near-impenetrable top four.

Peter Crouch’s famous goal at the Etihad swung the pendulum Spurs’s way in 2010, before Vincent Kompany’s winner in a similarly pivotal game the following season signalled City’s arrival at the European top table. A year later, they were champions.

The landscape has changed since then, with a denser concentration of wealthy contenders and the ‘Big Four’ now theoretically a ‘Big Six’ even before you throw West Ham, Leicester, Everton and Aston Villa into the mix.

Early indications are that Newcastle’s new owners will target a more gradual rise, pumping money into reviving a crumbling stadium as well as a ragged squad, upgrading an underdeveloped training ground and an underperforming academy.

In many ways, they are seeking the kind of infrastructure and grounding that Levy has been central to establishing at Spurs, except that in the years since the high of the 2019 Champions League Final, such progress has been undermined by the same flaws that characterised the Mike Ashley era at St James’ Park: frugality, stagnation, a lack of direction and uninspiring managerial appointments.

That Steve Bruce is set to be in the dugout this weekend seems a minor miracle, but when the 60-year-old is shown the door, Nuno Espirito Santo will likely inherit his place as the favourite for the sack unless results — and the football — improve fast.

The Portuguese has not been helped by a tumult of injury and availability issues in the opening months of his reign and would no doubt like to name a similar team to the one that beat Villa two weeks ago, but his selection will be complicated by the late returns of his South American stars.

More troubling fallout from the international break will have been the performance of Harry Kane in Tuesday’s draw with Hungary, his club form finally seeping into his England displays.

Sensationalist rumours of a Newcastle bid for Spurs’s talisman (left in training yesterday) are, inevitably, swirling already, but for every game the wantaway forward goes without scoring — and there have been six in a row in the League this season — the decision not to cash in on the genuine interest from City this summer becomes yet another stick to beat Levy with.

Against the unavoidable contrast of what will be a carnival St James’ Park, re-energised by a new era of ownership, he could do without any more of those.