Stay at SJP. Stay at 52,000: Against expansion or relocation

YOUSEF HATEM (@yousef-1892.bsky.social) dies on a hill.

Remember Jo Moore? The genius who sent the infamous memo around Whitehall, on 11 September 2001, suggesting to officials that it might be a “good day to bury bad news”? As it was, she became the very news that she had so keenly sought to bury.

Given that Lower Manhattan was literally on fire, Moore’s memo was outrageous, her decision to actually commit anything to paper idiotic in the extreme, but the thinking was not fundamentally wrong: if you wait for people to be distracted by something else, there’s an opportunity to do or say things that would otherwise be unpalatable or provoke an adverse reaction.

And so, to Newcastle United.

Into a second Wembley final in three years, hunting down Champions League qualification again, and possessed of Europe’s most fearsome striker – that’s Isak, not Osula, by the way – we are enjoying our football. So forgive me for thinking, fearing even, that we’ll never again be so buttered-up, so happy to be tickled, so willing to accept that a new stadium (or a substantially remodelled SJP) is our destiny.

We are satisfied. We are entertained. We are booking trains and we are snapping up any hotel room within reach of a Jubilee line station. We are distracted. By dreams of silverware and, maybe for the first time ever, a belief that we might actually get our hands on it. By visions of sunny autumn afternoons drinking premium lager in European city squares, and singing of Shola. By the things that we absolutely should be distracted by, because we love football and we love Newcastle United and this is – has always been – why we do this. And yet, all the same, distracted, in a way that might just have Miller, Silverstone and the rest licking their lips.

NUFC Finances - Deloittes Football Money List

Miller will, for sure, point to there having been “consultation”. Okay, Brad, if you insist. There has been the odd exchange between the club and its Fan Advisory Board. But the FAB is a creature of the club’s making and it is not (unlike the Supporters’ Trust) there to independently represent the interests of supporters. There was a show of hands at an event at The Stack in November, too, and the majority were fine with a new ground. Let’s state the obvious, shall we? The Stack is “powered by SELA” (whatever that means) and those who go there are, if not drinking Kool-Aid, then at least not allergic to it. And anyway, even if particular people sat around a particular trestle table in a particular shipping container on a particular evening drinking a particular hazy IPA happen to think a particular thing, it doesn’t mean a lot. And it is absolutely not the case, nor has it ever been the case, that what the club or a majority of its supporters want, is necessarily a good thing for the city that the club is supposed to serve.

There are supporters who are in favour of relocation, whether to Leazes Park (generally preferred, due to its proximity to SJP) or elsewhere. There are also supporters who want to see expansion of SJP to, say, 60,000 or thereabouts. Those two groups, taken together, probably constitute a majority.

I remain firmly in the minority – stay put, and stay at fifty-two. Let me first declare my own interest: it seems reasonable given the subject matter. A new stadium, or an enlarged stadium, would benefit me. Currently, I often cannot get a ticket when I want to go. I would – if I can say this without it sounding vulgar – be, fortunately, more able to bear price increases than some other supporters (and let’s not pretend that expansion or relocation would mean anything other than a serious price hike, in a region where 26% of children in working families – never mind those not in work – grow up in poverty). I also do not live on Tyneside and so a new stadium in Leazes Park would not deprive me of a favourite Cornetto-eating bench.

But I don’t want this.

I don’t think we need a bigger or better ground. Of course I accept that more arses on seats – heated or otherwise – and/or an increased price per arse, would mean, other things being equal, more money for the club to spend on nice things (or, if you prefer the modern parlance, to “be competitive”). I’m not stupid. But nor do I think the demand, truly, is there in any lasting or sustainable sense. There is unmet demand right now, but that’s because this is the fun bit. The bit where we’re still playing at the slightly ramshackle place we’ve always called home, where tickets (though still pricey) are less unaffordable than they’re likely to be in the future, and where we’re still on, generally, an upward trajectory. Demand doesn’t simply go up when you win things. Nobody bothered putting up with the odious Chris Tarrant after the first million was won.

Anyway, if the argument for expansion or relocation is about revenue generation (which it is – we do lag behind other Premier League clubs, notably Tottenham, on matchday income), then it’s really the premium stuff we’re looking to expand, and the income from non-football events. The hospitality, the executive boxes, the fulfilment of an incredible dream that, one day, thirsty dads from the Home Counties can have a shiatsu back massage in the Milburn Paddock and drool over Olivia Rodrigo gyrating in the exact same spot where Jack Colback once tripped over his own laces in a 1-1 with Wigan.

Yes, there’s excess demand from “ordinary” supporters now, some of which will be addressed by a bigger ground, but other “ordinary” supporters will be priced out, or will feel (rightly or wrongly) that the club is moving further away from them, or will decide, if not immediately then at some point, that the future state just isn’t as much fun as this bit: where we put Joelinton’s face on a Hawaiian shirt and still love J-Tinds’ shit-eating grin.

THRU BLACK & WHITE EYES - Treasure - 10/Feb/25

Look, a new or remodelled stadium could be a great thing, and could very well be the catalyst for an era of sustained (and sustainable) success for Newcastle United. If you can only see the positives in your own arguments, and the negatives on the other side, then you’re myopic. Save that myopia for matchday: it belongs there. I just think, on balance, we’ve already got it right. If we didn’t already have what we have – it’s precisely what we’d want, as it’s who we are. A big, rambling, lopsided, glorious mess of a stadium for an unwieldy, imperfect but special club.

It’s commonly said that fans who don’t want change are thinking with the heart, and that the rational, wise head sees the need to expand or relocate. That’s not how I see it. I fear that the desire for change, here, is – to some extent – evidence of some supporters’ eyes being bigger than their stomachs. There is a belief, a faith, a dream that because we want it all, we can have it all. That is the heart doing the thinking. Understandably, too: football is all about the heart, something that Mike Ashley – devoid of one – never got. I just fear – in fact, I actively think – that the club is consciously harnessing that energy, that love of club, that unquenchable desire for us to be the biggest and best, at a time when we’re dangerously full of piss, vinegar and urgent dreams, to sell our hearts something that our heads shouldn’t – and if Howe and the team weren’t doing well, wouldn’t – buy.

Tell yourself, if you must, that price hikes are inevitable and that we should just shrug, instead of saying no, this is not for us, this is not who we are. Maybe that ship sailed years ago, but really, truly, must we be so eager to cheer it on its way?

Pretend, if it helps, that rich out-of-towners are idiots who don’t want to experience atmosphere or authenticity, or that they will reliably be getting on rail replacement buses at Retford, week after drizzly week, to gorge on unlimited crostini in a soulless bowl.

Believe, if you like, that the city can afford to lose all, or part, of the only green space in its centre, however shabby it may have become, or that any beautification of the area around a new ground would be anything other than an ITV2 fever dream, complete with patio furniture, plastic foliage and inexplicable sculptures. Feel free to pretend that this pesky civic bit can just be swatted away, to imagine that the footprint that Newcastle United has on this compact, handsome city centre isn’t already grotesque, that football stadia aren’t inherently undemocratic, inefficient, greedy uses of finite and precious land, which by their very nature shut out most of the public, most of the time (see earlier article on this point here).

Kid yourself that, because we’re Newcastle, we’re uniquely blessed by providence – and that, just because dropping pins can now be heard at Arsenal, Tottenham, West Ham and Man City, the same wouldn’t happen to us (those clubs’ old grounds were, incidentally, tiny compared to the current SJP, and – like Goodison, while we’re on the subject – in far worse condition). Ignore the evidence. Feel free to think it doesn’t apply.

If you think we can have it all, that we can move to a new or substantially revamped ground, without losing something intrinsic, something irretrievable, along the way, then I envy you that optimism. If I chose to mistrust my gut, if I felt I could trust Miller, Silverstone and the best intentions of our owners, I could share that optimism. As it is, I don’t think I would trust any of them to make a ham and pease pudding stottie. All I see is cakeism of a Johnsonian magnitude. Didn’t end well for him. Won’t end well for us.

No. None of it. Not a bit of this is for me.

YOUSEF HATEM / @yousef-1892.bsky.social