Saudis take over Newcastle United and England- Andorra tonight.

 Saudis take over Newcastle United and England- Andorra tonight. 

The lunatics have taken over the asylum. Modern day football has been taken over by the London Stock Exchange. The money grabbing mercenaries have stuck their heads in the trough and we are no further forward than we were before. The age of plutocracy is well and truly with us and there's no turning back. The mega, obscenely wealthy bourgeoisie are lapping it up. They're in  seventh heaven. This is their day once again and the Premier League is at the mercy of greed yet again. There used to be the grubby former owner who had very little interest in the game apart from the last set of millions on his bank balance sheet. Thank goodness Mike Ashley has gone, the Newcastle fans may cry in unison.  

Yesterday Newcastle United, the club that once gloried in the legendary, goal scoring deeds of Len Shackleton, Jackie Milburn, Malcolm Macdonald, Bobby Mitchell and Alan Shearer are now in the hands of a Saudi Arabian investment firm who have now ploughed the princely sum of £300 million into this famous, big club. How on earth will Newcastle ever be able to pay off their substantial debts, electricity, rent and crippling debts? What will they tell their nagging landlords when they can't stump up the money for their housekeeping? They may have to survive on baked beans on toast.

This may be a facetious jibe on the grand name and reputation of Newcastle but the facts are out there in the public domain. Newcastle United, who have now adopted the same mantle of the Manchester City of old, are the envy of the rest of the Premier League if you don't include City in that equation. City have got their own multi millionaire Arab sheikhs to look after their best interests. In a sense though Newcastle may still be regarded as something of a laughing stock themselves given the nature of the club itself. 

Besides it was Mike Ashley, that celebrated owner of the Sports Direct chain and the House of Fraser company, who has been the incessant butt of every hilarious music hall joke since the formation of the Premier League. He sits there every week at St James Park, smug, hugely contented and fiercely ambitious. The fact is though that Ashley was ridiculed, lampooned and criticised so severely by the Newcastle fans that he may have been tempted to tell the club that he no longer needed all of the accompanying hassle and aggravation that until yesterday he'd been constantly subjected to. 

Now Ashley has left the club by the back door. He can take his portfolio and material belongings with him because, according to the Newcastle fans, he was just bad news, a selfish, mean and parsimonious man who just refused to spend the right amount of money on the right players. For ages now Newcastle have been treading water, buoyant in the Premier League but barely credible as a force for good. For a while they seemed to yo-yo precariously up and down from the lower Leagues and back to the Premier League. 

But the club have made another wishy washy and poor start to this current Premier League campaign and as we enter another international break, hover over the relegation trap door like characters in a Whitehall farce.  During the last 24 hours Newcastle have attracted the most extraordinary publicity. Fans have been celebrating, ecstatically brandishing the Saudi Arabian flag and cheering loudly for the first time perhaps since 1955, the last time the club won anything of any substance, the FA Cup.

There can be no explanation for the current developments at Newcastle. Now the fact is that nobody would have said anything about yesterday's activities had we not read between the lines. In today's world, money and colossal sums of money dictate everything from Sky TV and BT Sport rights to the brazen sponsors on the players shirts. It ensures that every young child can still demand the latest merchandise from the club such as the club's shirts, computer games, mugs, T-shirts, scarves and everything associated with the club. 

So here are the outrageous details. The Saudi owners, who have now restored the club to its rightful prominence on the big stage, stand accused of horribly nefarious dealings. Suddenly, human rights violations have been levelled at those in the background. These are nasty figures who just want to spend millions on players just to dig them out of their present predicament. 

Now some of us may not have a problem with those admirable thought processes. Wouldn't you be grateful if some rich sugar daddy bailed out your football club if they were struggling in the bottom half of League 1? You bet you would. You'd shake their hand politely and tell them that you're with them you all the way. You'd take your regular seat in your club's ground, sit back and relax as your team hammer Manchester City for the sake of argument. 

But Newcastle are a completely different kettle of fish. Their supporters have been starved of success for so long that even the most distinguished of football historians may have trouble in leafing through the pages to find something that makes them a team to be reckoned with. Of course the fans are fanatical, almost obsessed with the club, pleading with their team to lift any trophy of significance but it just hasn't happened.

Now though another bunch of Arab sheikhs have come out of the desert and bought the team breathing space, a decent sustenance, water after the famine. To the impartial outsider you're inclined to think that no club has a divine right to win anything, least of all Newcastle. Besides, every team in the Premier League started on the same level playing field on the opening day of the football season. So why should Newcastle be in any way different. 

At the moment their manager Steve Bruce looks like a man who doesn't quite know which way to turn, a man still haunted and maybe a tad persecuted because everybody seems to be blaming him for the club's misfortunes So the hometown boy from the North East folds his arms defiantly, grins stoically, and pretends its Christmas because you've got to look forward to something and Santa Claus can't be guaranteed to give Bruce the festive present he may want. 

And so domestic football takes another brief rest to make way for what should be another thrilling England epic against those world beaters Andorra. Now without wishing to denigrate the likes of Andorra, World Cup qualifiers may not come any easier for Gareth Southgate's England. Andorra have already been beaten by England and there are some who may be wishing that the England football team do what they have to do and just qualify for another World Cup without breaking any sweat. You can never discount Poland though and how painful are the memories of another World Cup qualifier 48 years ago? 

Newcastle, for their part, might be pinching themselves since it's not every day that an Arab prince comes to your rescue. You flick back through history and wonder what the po-faced, dispassionate likes of former managers such as Joe Harvey or Bill McGarry would have thought of the Newcastle of today.  Both Harvey and McGarry were men who insisted on strict discipline and nothing but complete commitment to the cause. Neither of their teams were pleasant on the eye as such but yesterday Saudi Arabian financial affluence arrived on the Tyne and that's nothing to sneeze at. Away the lads, indeed.