The Premier League executive did not mince words. ‘Oh, we know when it happens, it’s going to be a s***show,’ he said, of Newcastle’s takeover. He was talking Saudi Arabian owners, murdered journalists, Amnesty International, protestors. You know, the usual.

Some nine weeks later, the only part of that statement appearing unreliable is the ‘when’.

On Tuesday, from an office in Geneva, the World Trade Organisation are likely to deliver 130 pages of a report linking Newcastle’s prospective owners with a broadcast piracy scam that directly impacts on Premier League rights.

Such is the nature of football’s business that it is still considered unlikely Newcastle’s sale will be blocked — the Government have run a mile from such action — but given the good news narrative of a positive investment in a famous club, and the removal of an unpopular custodian, it is taking a worrying length of time.

The WTO report will centre on beoutQ, which shows major sports events whose rights are often — but not exclusively — owned by beIN Sports. BeoutQ are linked to the Saudi state, beIN to Qatar. This is part of the soft war between Gulf nations, with football very much torn.

Manchester City, for instance, are owned in Abu Dhabi, who are allied with Saudi Arabia against Qatar. Yet City also have to protect international rights, bought by beIN Sports. It gets complicated.

Unsurprisingly, the skirmish has money at its heart — Saudi Arabia wish to destabilise Qatar financially — and would appear to be causing the Premier League a bigger headache than the murder of investigative journalist Jamal Khashoggi and issues regarding human rights.

The protestors, it is no doubt cynically imagined, will eventually grow tired and go away. Some very rich men whose intellectual property is threatened as their loot is siphoned off, are a rather different prospect.

The WTO directly ties beoutQ to the Arabsat satellite, majority owned by the Saudi state — and not to Colombia or Cuba as was first claimed — so it is hard to see the Premier League’s next move.

How can they enter into a trusting relationship with an investment group linked to the pirating of their product?

In the meantime, Newcastle stagnates. Steve Bruce does not speak to Mike Ashley, who appears uninterested in much beyond his balance being paid, but is allowed no contact with the prospective owners, who are desperate not to make any move that might jeopardise the deal.

And while with football in abeyance, it was only the bottom six that were considered relegation candidates, now the season is resuming, eight points off the bottom three with nine games left does not seem such a cushion, particularly with Aston Villa, Bournemouth and West Ham among the first four opponents.

Still, those games might be easier to negotiate than Tuesday’s news from Geneva.

The s***show must go on at Newcastle, sadly.

Sancho’s struggle for suitors

Jadon Sancho is said to be considering making peace with Manchester City, if it secures him a £100million move from Borussia Dortmund. No doubt.

Chelsea look to be sorted with Timo Werner and the word from Manchester United is they will not match Dortmund’s demand. There was talk of an exchange deal with Alexis Sanchez but, unsurprisingly, it did not fly.

Dortmund are about youth, energy and growth. Sanchez is the opposite of their identikit type of player. Whether City have the money for Sancho is also uncertain in the current financial climate.

They have no guarantee of Champions League football for maybe two years, until the Court of Arbitration for Sport presents their findings and one giant investment would leave them scarcely able to make other, important, changes.

Six months ago, Sancho could have had his pick of leading Premier League clubs — now he will be lucky to find a single suitable suitor.

Remember when coronavirus first came west, how there were going to be terrible consequences for China?

They were going to pay for covering up the spread of the disease, there would be an impact on trade, on business, on international relations. So here’s the reality: the Wuhan Open, October 19-25, just three weeks later than its original date in the Women’s Tennis Association schedule.

The tour will also visit Beijing and Shenzhen as part of an eight-week stretch on Chinese courts, but obviously the Wuhan event comes with heightened symbolism.

There will be no punishment, no consequences, no moral judgement. China has the money, western capitalism wants the money. Everything else is the emptiest posturing.

Adrian’s No 1 for Kop chop

Football is back but it is also near the season’s end, meaning the final weeks will take place against the usual backdrop of transfer speculation.

It seems an age ago that an erratic performance by Adrian against Atletico Madrid saw Liverpool exit the Champions League in the last elite match played on these shores.

Understandably, given what has unfolded since, his performance may even have been forgotten. Not at Anfield, though. After the experience in the 2018 Champions League final, inconsistent goalkeepers find no hiding place there.

Adrian will collect his title winners’ medal and bid farewell and while Loris Karius may think that means he has a future back at the club now his loan at Besiktas has ended, it doesn’t.

Time for Scott to tell us her big idea… or any idea

Alex Scott has been writing about her new role in the government’s Cultural Renewal Taskforce.

She is sport’s sole representative on a committee that includes heavy hitters from the arts and business, chair people, chief executives, artistic directors — it is almost as if Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden sees sporting revival as little more than trivia, compared to the heavyweight needs of the ballet industry.

Scott used her newspaper column to offer her credentials. No, she had never run a sports club but she really cared about the issues and wanted to ‘come up with solutions, to advise, to think outside the box’.

Indeed but one actual idea would have been nice. Just one, given that it’s close on a month since the appointment. That’s a lot of thinking time — whether inside or outside the box.

At the weekend, Scott had strong words on the lamentable exclusion of women’s sports from Project Restart. The Premier League is back tomorrow, Test cricket on July 8 but the WSL season has been curtailed and there will be no women’s cricket until at least September.

‘Women’s sport has taken a backseat and it’s not acceptable,’ Scott said. ‘I’m really pushing that when women’s sport does return, it needs to be better and we need to put things in place so this won’t happen again.’

Fine words. But, once more, a tangible, formulated, actionable idea might be helpful. Just one

Villa need a fast restart in tough race for safety

Aston Villa’s fight for survival begins on Wednesday. They will restart two points from a safe position with a game in hand, at home to Sheffield United.

It is going to be difficult. Villa’s home record this season is better than any team in the bottom seven but, without crowds, an advantage will be lost.

Then there is the question of what will happen to the best players if Villa are relegated.

There is much bullish talk of holding out for top dollar — £80million for Jack Grealish, £40m for Tyrone Mings — but that rarely plays well in extreme circumstances. Villa can’t keep Grealish again at Championship level and Mings will be protective of his England career.

Unlike many clubs with relegation worries, Villa have genuine assets, players that have not been tainted by this season’s failure but that still does not add up to £120m in a depressed market.

The talk will be defiant, but if Villa drop — into a league that is discussing a salary cap — much will be out of their hands. The match at Villa Park Wednesday is viewed as the undercard before Manchester CityArsenal but, in many ways, the stakes are higher.

End racism? It’s not debatable

One of the most powerful images of the recent Black Lives Matter protests was of England under- 21 hockey player Darcy Bourne holding a placard with the simplest message: ‘Why is ending racism a debate?’ Answer: it isn’t.

What constitutes the end of racism, however, and how attainable or quantifiable any success can be is another matter. To have zero tolerance is one thing but zero racism is quite different.

It can be undermined by one man with a horrid word, or a crude gesture or by a single loutish incident. That does not mean we should not aim high, particularly at institutional levels but we must be realistic too.

The angry crowds that gathered this weekend spoiling for a fight under the guise of protecting heritage were identified by their songs and stances as football fans. So is this debate with them?

If so, it is unlikely to be over for some time. We should not be discouraged if racism is not, in some tangible, finite way, ended. So we try harder, and we keep looking up, and rest assured, for the majority, the question on the placard barely applies.

Just remember a thug giving a Nazi salute beside a statue of Sir Winston Churchill is not a defeat for the fight against racism. He’s no more significant than a bump in the road. We ride over him and move on.

Most charming story of the weekend was Bryn Gatland, coming on as a substitute for the Highlanders and scoring a late winning drop goal to seize victory from the Chiefs, coached by his father Warren.

No matter how competitive and driven Warren Gatland must be, he is also a father. If he is a normal one, there is a small part of his defeat that will also feel like the greatest victory.

Irony of ironies is the furore over Daniel Kinahan’s part in the making of the Tyson Fury-Anthony Joshua fight.

Kinahan is described as a gang leader, associated with widespread crimes, including murder. This is completely different, of course, to the regime of Saudi Arabia, expected to host the event — because when states murder, that is somehow more acceptable.

Wray’s way kept players onside

Nigel Wray trashed the rules in his time as chairman of Saracens but at least he believed in paying players.

The strong-arm tactics subsequently used to enforce wage cuts without consultation in Premiership Rugby makes Wray appear almost honourable by comparison.

Premiership rugby clubs are lucky to be protected by RFU rules that state anyone playing outside this country cannot represent England. T

Take that away and there would be an exodus. Why would anyone want to play for this lot now unless they had to?

Steve Stammers passed away last week. The many kind tributes described him as ‘old school’. In some ways, no doubt he was.

Steve was a working-class grammar school boy who always wore a collar and tie to a game, his shoes were recently polished and he was unfailingly polite. Also, in his recent years as a freelance, he was of an age to draw a pension. Quite literally, that’s old school.

But what truly afforded Steve the term was that he knew people, and they trusted him, and then told him things which he could put on the back pages of newspapers.

Arsenal did not announce their new manager was Arsene Wenger in 1996; Steve did. And he alerted this newspaper to Wenger’s departure in 2018 too — the story he filed said ‘this week’ and it was announced on the Friday.

He revealed Glenn Hoddle was leaving Swindon to manage Chelsea and he spoke fluent French, so that when the country’s players came here, he was better placed to befriend them than most of us.

He was funny too. In 2004, Rudi Voller named Germany’s European Championship squad. There were five forwards, including a Brazilian, a Slovenian and two Poles. Steve studied the news.

‘They seem to have given up on that master race idea,’ he deadpanned. Would that be allowed today? Yeah, he was old school. Rest well.

source:- allfootballapp