A couple of weeks ago, Amanda Staveley “left Newcastle and travelled over to Manchester City,” she says, “just to talk to them and see their training facilities, to see what we can do. I was thinking, ‘god, I can’t wait for our guys to get their trophies, I can’t wait to deliver what the fans really deserve.” “That’s ultimately what we want,” Mehrdad Ghodoussi chips in. “We want success.”
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Four months on from Newcastle United’s head-spinning, transformative takeover, the club’s new owners are not backing down; upwards, onwards. Life for them, for everybody connected to St James’ Park, has been “exhilarating and exhausting,” Staveley admits, 100mph of euphoria, of problems to solve, poor results, new appointments, financial plans, meetings, statements, the transfer window and, finally, uplift on the pitch. The bigger picture is constant.
“There is no reason why Newcastle in the next five years should not be a Man City or a Man United or a Liverpool or a Chelsea,” Ghodoussi says.
This interview — their first post-takeover — is supposed to be reflective, looking back at January, at their early calls and gazing forward to what’s next, but as Staveley says, “In some ways it’s too soon because we’ve still got such a lot to do.” She is fresh from a presentation about Newcastle’s women’s team and yet another video call is looming. The pace is relentless. The conversation, which takes place at their home-office in central London, is similar.
Staveley and Ghodoussi are partners, in family and in business. She is the owner of PCP Capital Partners and he is a managing partner of the company which now has a 10 per cent stake in Newcastle. The Reuben family hold another 10 per cent and the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia (PIF) have the rest. Staveley and Jamie Reuben sit on the board, but PIF are the big players, super-rich and controversial, who — theoretically — make the club the wealthiest on the planet.
Staveley and Ghodoussi spent four years attempting to buy Newcastle. They are now its “asset-managers,” which means running and reinvigorating Newcastle and what that means is doing everything, pretty much. Under Mike Ashley’s ownership, Lee Charnley was the club’s sole director. Departments were cut to the quick and outsourced. There has been no footballing executive. Infrastructure aged and peeled. The team flatlined.
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In January, Staveley and Ghodoussi were signing players at the same time as firefighting, conducting a full audit, putting in more money, overseeing the appointment of a sporting director while interviews for a chief executive were taking place, working with the Premier League on sponsorship arrangements, improving their training facilities and then fending off a court case from Ashley. Oh, and there were football matches, too.
To put it mildly, there is a lot to process:
- “I would love Eddie (Howe) to be the next (Sir) Alex Ferguson,” Ghodoussi says of their head coach.
- While they do not name him, Dan Ashworth, who is currently on gardening leave at Brighton & Hove Albion, will be appointed sporting director.
- They have had “the most incredible candidates come forward,” for the CEO role, Staveley says.
- While they aim to increase the 52,000 capacity at St James’, there are no plans to build a new stadium. “It would be like tearing your soul out,” Ghodoussi says.
- They are looking at sites for a purpose-built, world-class training ground. “That will probably take three years, maybe a little bit more,” Ghodoussi says.
- As far as they are concerned, their management contract will continue once a CEO arrives.
- Kieran Trippier, “isn’t someone we’ll ever sell,” Staveley says of their recent signing from Atletico Madrid. “If he can play, he will stay.”
- Other January targets like Sven Botman and Jesse Lingard, “wanted to come,” to Tyneside and Botman, the Lille defender, “still does very much,” Staveley says.
- Newcastle’s women’s team will be paid “as professionals,” says Staveley and they want them to play at St James’ this season.
- Alan Shearer’s statue will shortly be moved onto stadium ground, close to Sir Bobby Robson’s and “Nine Bar” will be turned back into “Shearer’s”.
- They can “work with,” the Premier League’s new rules on associated party sponsorship.
- They will “vigorously” defend legal action from Ashley for allegedly breaching the terms of a £10 million loan he provided to help facilitate the club’s £305 million sale in October.
It is enough to be going on with, enough to make your brain hurt. On a warm-weather training camp in Saudi last month, Staveley “didn’t go to bed for two days,” she says, as transfer deals back home percolated. “They’re four hours ahead and so you’re up until 3-4am, waiting to sign documents.” For a little while, Ghodoussi had trouble sleeping; his hands shook with fatigue.
Even now, Staveley says, with Newcastle 17th in the table, unbeaten in six Premier League matches, with new players integrating and optimism surging, she is “still waking up with that feeling of ‘did we do enough?’ I’m still having nightmares. There was a lot of adrenaline in January but fear, too; the fear that you get these things wrong. And then to lose Kieran, to get all those injuries …”
They went away for half-term with Lexi, their seven-year-old son. “We love Newcastle and it’s our big, extended family, but poor little boy, he’s been a football orphan,” Staveley says. Did they get a chance to take a breath? “Yes and no,” Ghodoussi says. “It doesn’t stop the emails, the calls and the Zooms.”
Relegation hung and hangs over everything, “the overarching issue,” Staveley says. “The number one priority.”
Back to last October and the limbo of 18 months or so suddenly clearing. A fee to buy Newcastle had been agreed with Ashley in April 2020, but the takeover halted when the Premier League requested clarity on separation between PIF and the Saudi state. When it finally happened, fans thronged to St James’ to celebrate Ashley’s departure and the beginning of something else. For everybody, including Staveley and Ghodoussi, it was a shock.
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“We spent four years pushing to get it over the line and the last two were really difficult,” Ghodoussi says. “It was tough, putting a consortium together that made sense, dealing with a seller who is notoriously difficult. Very quickly, there’s the reality; we haven’t won a match and relegation is a huge concern.”
The timing meant “there was no plan,” Staveley says. They thought they might have got the club by January or at the end of the season which, “would have allowed us a few months to bring the right people in,” says Ghodoussi, but instead were confronted by a winless side and a manager in Bruce who, “ultimately needed to go. People were saying ‘why didn’t you act quicker’, but we had to take stock of everything and find out what the issues were”.
“We had to get the building blocks in place before we hit the transfer window,” Staveley says. “In my opinion, we weren’t fit enough. They just hadn’t had intense training. They were disjointed, not working together. We had to get that sense of oneness, of belonging, of being united.”
Bruce went by mutual consent, his lucrative contract paid up, and then came another pause as they sought a replacement. “This phrase has been thrown around a lot, but the reason we’re process-driven is because we want to make the right decisions, not knee-jerk decisions,” says Ghodoussi. “The wrong decisions would have been a disaster. We have a long-term view.”
They researched what Ghodoussi calls, “the whole universe of coaches. We were looking at a list of, say, 30-40 names and then narrowed it down in terms of our requirements.” Which were? “We needed somebody who could deliver today and who understood the relegation battle,” says Staveley.
“We got down to two people,” says Ghodoussi. “Eddie was one of them and Unai Emery the other. Unai had a track record of success and maybe that made us move towards him a bit more. I have to say, though, that the chairman (Yasir Al-Rumayyan) wanted Eddie from day one.”
Their approach for Emery, the Villarreal coach, was perhaps a little too full-on. He retreated. “Eddie was actually ahead of everybody on points,” Staveley says. “When you looked at his data, he was fantastic. You could see what he’d done at Bournemouth was extraordinary, but could he do the same with more resource? Unai had a good name and a reputation, but would he have been able to get up to speed without the infrastructure?”
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“Unai would have been the wrong choice,” says Ghodoussi.
“It would have been wrong,” Staveley agrees. “We made the right decision with Eddie. He’s come in, no airs or graces, no ego, and we’re there to support him. I’ve really grown to care a great deal about him and his coaches. We talk to Eddie multiple times a day. I’m fascinated by what he does. He’s so detailed, so hard working. You don’t know when you’re interviewing someone what they’re going to be like but he’s got huge integrity.”
“I would love Eddie to be the next Alex Ferguson,” says Ghodoussi.
“Yeah, I would,” Staveley says. “We know Eddie has the ability to keep us up. And it was always with a view to a long-term future. We hope and think that Eddie will be with us for a very long time.”
In Ashley’s final two transfer windows, Newcastle signed nobody who was not called Joe Willock. As the pandemic bit, players who should have been moved on were kept. Bruce had been under pressure, bouncing between systems and the squad was stale. When the takeover was completed, January stretched into the distance. And then, in late December, Callum Wilson, the team’s only reliable source of goals, was injured.
Again, there was a process. “We’d looked at every single available player in Europe, America, everywhere,” says Staveley. “There were some younger players we wanted to bring in like (Hugo) Ekitike (the Reims forward), but he wouldn’t have been one for today, he would have been an investment for the future.”
“For us, it was very important to bring in players who would have an impact now, not in two or three years’ time,” says Ghodoussi. “We looked at Kieran (Trippier) and said, ‘this is a guy who can come in and make an impact’.”
“Graeme Jones (the assistant manager, who was named interim head coach when Bruce left) and I talked about Kieran in our first conversation,” Staveley says.
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“We were all aligned,” says Ghodoussi. “We put a transfer committee in place and made decisions as a collective, with expertise from all fields. Eddie came in with what he needed as a coach, the requirements for his team. Steve Nickson, our head of recruitment, has been fantastic …”
“We really rate him,” Staveley interjects.
“We also brought in Nick Hammond (who has filled director of football and consultancy roles at several clubs), to give us a sense check — ‘are these the right prices, are people trying to swindle us’?” says Ghodoussi.
“And what is the back story of the player we’re looking at?” says Staveley. “Let’s have references on everything, where he is, where he can go, where he’ll fit with the current team, how everyone will gel, character and so on, because actually understanding the chemistry of the team was really important.”
“We spoke to a lot of people and it was ‘ah, January, forget it’,” Ghodoussi says. “It was hard. Agents were leaking information, selling clubs would leak, you’d see your name associated with god knows who. Not only was it a difficult window, but everybody was thinking we had money to throw around. We walked away from deals because of that. We can’t set a precedent that we are there to buy at any cost.”
“There were times when I was screaming at agents,” Staveley says. “I think Eddie heard me using a word I would never normally use!”
The point is, they were doing all of it themselves.
“We were also 19th going into the window,” says Staveley. “So we had that, an illiquid market and the complexity of COVID, which meant clubs didn’t want to sell because they didn’t know where their squads would end up. We had to encourage players — ‘we’ll be a safe place for you, we’ll deliver and grow’. Some desperately wanted to come to us, like Sven (Botman), who still does very much and has talked very openly about that.
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“Coming through all that showed us we can do it, that we can stick to our plan and if we get criticised on the last day for ‘oh, you’re going after Jesse (Lingard, the Manchester United winger)’, well, Jesse wanted to come to us. We did everything. We never stopped. From the start to the finish, we did not stop working.”
Five new players arrived at a cost of around £92 million, a bigger spend than any other club in Europe. It was a double statement: there is a new power around and relegation, no thanks.
“If you go down you’ve got financial issues,” Ghodoussi says. “Now, we’re in a position where if we did go down we’ve got the ability to invest and bring it back up. We can do that. But do we want that? Of course not. Nobody does. We want to stay up. That’s been our priority.”
Does their outlay mean there will be less cash to play with in the summer. “Only in the sense of financial fair play (FFP),” Ghodoussi says. “This summer is going to be important for us. Are we going to bring in five players, two players, one? We don’t know. We’ll look at what the squad requires, we’ll look at the market and act accordingly. We don’t have any limitations in terms of what we can do until we hit FFP. We want to create a sustainable club.”
Of their new additions, Trippier was the tone-setter, an England international fresh from winning La Liga at Atletico Madrid. He is precisely what Newcastle have craved, even if at 31 and having signed a two-and-a-half year contract, he may not be around when the team are in a position to compete.
“We don’t know that,” Staveley says sharply. “He’s so professional, so fit. I’ve been so impressed. To be honest, Kieran isn’t someone we’ll ever sell. I’ve said to him, ‘You’re with us and that’s it. You can be our Alan Shearer. You’ll be a standard-bearer for Newcastle for many years to come’. If he can play, he will stay and I believe you might find he’ll still be playing in five years’ time because he’s capable of it. He’s got something extraordinary.
“What we’ve loved is what it’s done for some of the others. Look at Joe Willock. He was a different person before we went to Saudi. For the young lads, having people like Kieran around gives them a sense of where they need to be. It’s really important to have that balance.
“We looked at one player in January and were a bit unsure about him. We bid for him but he joined another club. References came back that he was selfish. He’s an incredible player but not a team player. We wanted to make sure our chemistry is right.”
Next will be Ashworth, once compensation is agreed with Brighton. The sporting director will be a “key hire,” Ghodoussi says, “the person that drives the football operation, who creates the structure. It’s like building a house. If you don’t have the right foundations, it will fall down. That’s why the sporting director role is so important. It’s building a very strong academy that goes right across all the other verticals into the first team.
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“We were accused of not knowing what we were doing, that we had to get someone in before January because it’s all about the transfer window, but for us it wasn’t. It’s not about one year. It’s about five or 10 years. You need to bring in the right person to make the right decisions.”
The new CEO, Ghodoussi says, must have “a vision about making a successful, sustainable business. Driving commercial revenues means more money and that means the club can invest more into its infrastructure, into its squad and everything else. They’re all simple things, but when you put them in place it’ll create an incredible output.”
“We don’t just want a CEO that has been at another Premier League club and is going to say, “OK, this is what you do and what I’ll continue to do’,” Staveley says. “We want someone who is going to really challenge the status quo and look at the business from different angles. We think the Premier League will change. It has to. It has done an incredible job in terms of attracting sponsorship but we’re moving into a new digital area of NFTs and different commerces which give clubs massive opportunities for revenue.
“All of that has to be well thought through. We do not want our club selling products to fans that aren’t suitable. We have to really think about what our fans want and they also have to have value for money. We want a CEO that can help us grow and put Newcastle on the global map. That doesn’t mean Mehrdad and I will step back because we won’t. We’ll just have more people to do the work.”
Which effectively answers the next question, about their own role as asset managers. The couple have been the public faces of the takeover, but some have assumed that once an executive team is in place they will step away from the coalface. Will they be needed day-to-day?
“We see ourselves continuing to do the job we’re doing,” Staveley says. “Once the CEO comes in we’ll do as much work as we’re doing now because we think that’ll help us achieve our objectives faster. We are so entwined. We want the club to grow. We’ll bring a CEO in and we’ll work with that person on a daily basis. Oh God, yes, we’ll carry on. We’ve interviewed everybody on the basis that we’re here.
“Newcastle is at this very important stage in its history and if we take our foot off the gas now it’s not going to help the club fulfil its ambition. We won’t get in the way, we’ve got to let people do their jobs and support them, but we can do more work on the community side, investing in Newcastle, the academy, the foundation. Our frustration at the moment is that there aren’t enough hours in the day.”
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“There’s a lot to do,” Ghodoussi says. “There are a lot of people we need to hire.”
“There’s so much,” says Staveley. “I want to do everything now, this year. We can’t.”
“It’s like with anything,” Ghodoussi says. “It just takes time.”
And money.
There is no avoiding it. Money is at the centre of Newcastle’s story; how they got it, what they do with it and what it means. Staveley and Ghodoussi’s first-hand relationship with the club goes back to October 2017, when they attended a home game against Liverpool. The following month, she and other investors, which included the Reuben family but not PIF, made three bids for Newcastle, all of which Ashley rejected. It was a bitter fallout.
Back then, she spoke about making Newcastle “a thriving business that is an absolutely integral part of the city,” and she says the same things now, except that PIF’s involvement has changed the wider narrative. Over 96 per cent of fans who responded to a poll held by the Newcastle United Supporters Trust in 2020 declared their support for the takeover, but its completion brought multiple claims about sportswashing and Saudi’s record on human rights.
The Athletic covered those issues in detail; you can read a selection here.
Suddenly, Newcastle were splashed on front pages as well as back. To some, they ceased being a sporting institution and became a propaganda tool for a nation synonymous with repression and persecution. To the people who brought PIF to the table, they are “incredible partners,” with the resources and desire to transform Newcastle, on and off the pitch.
To others, difficult and competing emotions vie with each other; excitement and concern, guilt and joy.
“Were we shocked about the negative news or reading things? It’s not something we concerned ourselves with,” Ghodoussi says. “We concerned ourselves with having the right partners who would deliver what we needed to take Newcastle from where it is today to where it should be. We’ve been working with PIF for a number of years now. We’re privileged and proud to be working with them.”
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“We couldn’t have done it with any other partner,” Staveley says. “I’ve said that many times.”
“The whole of Saudi have become fans of Newcastle,” says Ghodoussi. “It’s a young population, focused on sports, on getting kids out and playing, on football and golf. That’s why it kind of fitted into PIF’s strategy as well. They’re really smart investors. Yasir, the chairman, has been to visit the club what, four times now, meeting the players and Eddie, wanting to know what’s going on and how he can help. He’s given us autonomy to do the work we need to do. It’s been incredible to have that support. Likewise with Jamie (Reuben).”
In many respects, after a decade and more of minimal investment and little communication with supporters — during the pandemic, the club made use of the government furlough scheme, something they never acknowledged in public — Newcastle are playing more of a community role.
“Do you know what the most important thing we’ve done is?” Staveley asks. “Not what we did in the transfer window. But announcing that we’ll become a Living Wage Employer. Because that affects the people that are lowest-paid in the company.”
Is that because they were told to do it by PIF, to launder Saudi’s reputation? “Christ, no,” she says. “Anyone who knows me knows that this is in my DNA.”
Since the purchase, Staveley, Ghodoussi and Reuben have all made personal donations to the NUFC Fans’ Foodbank. Can doing the right thing be the wrong thing? Yes, if it is sportswashing, no if you think it is about time Newcastle became a beacon in a city and region which could do with a bit of help, of care. At the time of the takeover, Staveley said: “I understand and appreciate all the messages on human rights and we take them very seriously.”
“PIF own 80 per cent of this asset, they have huge ambitions, not only for the club but in terms of working with the community, investing in the city,” Ghodoussi says. “The similarities would be with Manchester City. What Sheikh Mansour has done there has been fantastic. We want to take the best of other clubs and apply it to Newcastle.”
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PIF’s involvement brought concerns from within the Premier League, that Newcastle would use their wealth to game the system. Was there hostility from rival clubs? “Initially, there was a lot,” Staveley confirms. “But I’m on the FFP committee and I said, ‘you won’t find a raft of related-party transactions because this was not our business plan’. We know we’ve got such a good story that we can attract people and PIF are such good partners that brands are very keen to work with them.
“We said, ‘we’re not what you think we are’ and I think other clubs are getting to know that. We want to be transparent about the way we do business. We have come out of it with a set of rules which I think will be very compelling and we can work with. And I’m very pleased we have, because I’ve always known we will be able to show fair market value for our sponsorship rights. We’re getting offers for sponsorship that are probably outbidding potential Saudi sponsors.”
“The plan was always to see what was the best deal for the club,” Ghodoussi says.” That’s something else that’s going to take time. There’s nothing specific telling us it has to be Saudi. We wanted to do it the right way. Did we plan to bring in a ‘dodgy’ deal for £100 million? Not at all.”
Since the takeover, the consortium have “had to do two funding rounds, putting two sets of money into the club,” Staveley says. “There was an immediate requirement for cash, day one, for working capital and then for the transfer window. What’s important isn’t the price we paid Mike. What matters is what we invest in the club.”
The Ashley era is well and truly over, but the man himself has not quite gone away. The retailer is now suing Staveley and Ghodoussi for immediate repayment of a £10 million loan made during the takeover to cover legal and other costs, claiming terms were breached when Staveley said she was “looking forward” to removing Sports Direct signage at St James’.
Among other things, in their written defence, Staveley’s lawyers claim that Sports Direct and Flannels, another of Ashley’s companies, paid no sponsorship fees to Newcastle for signage in 2019-20, 2020-21 and 2021-22.
It is now the subject of a High Court action and Ghodoussi says, “we’re genuinely disappointed and we will contest it vigorously. We thought we had a good relationship with Mike. To his credit, he pushed very hard to get this deal done. We couldn’t have done it without him. He always said he wanted to sell the club to the right people and he has sold the club to the right people. We’ve never said anything negative about him.”
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“I’m saddened,” Staveley says. “This is a real shame because I like him a lot. And I’m proud of what we did.”
The £10 million loan has caused confusion. Ashley’s case claims that, “PCP and the First Defendant (Staveley) were also unable to meet the advisory, legal, and other costs and commissions associated with PCP’s participation in the SPA (sales and purchase agreement). Therefore, and in order for the whole transaction to be able to proceed, the Claimant agreed to lend the First Defendant the funds required to pay PCP’s bill.”
So why did they even need Ashley’s money? “As the defence says, we incurred costs that were for the benefit of the whole consortium,” Staveley says. “Mike wanted very much a deal done very quickly and that meant we made a decision which meant he could close quickly. We took that burden on.”
The court documents have raised other questions. In previous public comments, Staveley said she used “her family’s money,” to fund PCP’s 10 per cent stake in Newcastle and in November reporters quoted her as saying she had sold a hotel for “about £60 million … which is where the capital for this came from.”
Ashley’s case claims “the Reuben brothers agreed to lend the necessary funds (GBP £30,500,000) to Cantervale Limited, a company owned by the First Defendant.”
In relation to Staveley’s legal defence, the BBC subsequently reported that, “Amanda Staveley has said in High Court documents that she borrowed £30.5 million to help fund her 10 per cent stake in the club.”
Offered an opportunity to clear things up, Ghodoussi says they are “not going to get into the specifics,” because of commercial and legal sensitivities, but they will provide The Athletic with a statement correcting the record.
Sources close to PCP say that assets, including the hotel, were put into one company regarding the purchase of Newcastle and then loaned to another.
The statement, when it comes, reads: “PCP’s investment in Newcastle United involved corporate financing, as is common in transactions of this nature. However, PCP’s investment in the club was not financed by any personal loan or liability incurred by Amanda Staveley.”
There are many things to talk about. There are firm commitments regarding the women’s team. “I’d like them to have a race up the league against the men!” Staveley says. “We’re hoping they’ll do a walk-on at St James’ before the end of the season and we want them to play a match there, too. We want a financial plan that takes them through the next few years. We have to pay them as professionals. That’s a big thing.”
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When Staveley was in Saudi with Howe and the team, Ghodoussi was on Tyneside modifying Newcastle’s training ground, “with carpets, new paint, signs, just so that when they came back there’d be a change. We’ll do what we can with what we have, we’ll look at refurbishment and extension so we can bring it up to standard and then at the same time we’ll look at a new training facility, something on a par with Leicester City or one of the big ones.
“We’re currently looking at sites. That will probably take three years, maybe a little bit more, because we have to do designs, planning, all of those things. We want to develop an all-encompassing facility that includes the academy, the women’s team, the first team, sports science, everything you’d see at one of the top six clubs. That’s what helps drive the football.”
“We’re constantly asking ‘what can we do’,” Staveley says. “We’ve told each individual player they have access to us because there’s no director of football, so Eddie can focus on coaching and we can focus on nurturing. I found the Saudi trip really rewarding in that respect. I got so much one-on-one time with the players, that chance to be a bit of a mum, to get to know them and for them to get to know me.”
When Rafa Benitez left Newcastle in 2019 and was replaced by Bruce, up to 10,000 part-season tickets were given away. Now, they face the opposite problem. With the club demonstrating ambition again, home matches and away ends are routinely sold out. On social media, fans fret about how the new owners will respond to greater demand.
One thing can be ruled out. “St James’ Park is unique, special, the cathedral of the city, sitting on its hill,” Ghodoussi says. “We will definitely look at expanding it, working with the city and council to see what we can do. There are a lot of things that need to happen first, but that’s the way forward. If we can get it to 60 or 65,000 thousand, amazing, and we will look at every possibility. But are we going to build a new stadium? No. It would be like tearing your soul out.”
There will be other changes around the ground. The placing of Shearer’s statue — which was paid for by the family of Freddy Shepherd, Newcastle’s former chairman — outside stadium property, has always felt sad and symbolic, but it will now be brought in. “Alan’s statue is moving, that’s happening, getting his spot right next to Sir Bobby (Robson),” Ghodoussi says. And Nine Bar will be turned into Shearer’s again.
“We want our ex-players to play a role, to be ambassadors for the club.”
That reconnection between club, fans, ownership, players and city is probably the least tangible but most obvious aspect of the takeover. After years of sullenness and discord, St James’ is loud, together and purposeful.
On their visits to the city, to the club, the couple are mobbed. “A lot of selfies!” Staveley says. “I don’t mind; neither of us do. It’s lovely. It’s an honour. Remember how we first came to Newcastle. It was the fans who said, ‘please buy our club,’ and we fell in love. Our job is to work for them.”
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“To see the change and the way people are absorbing it and the outpouring of love is fantastic,” Ghodoussi says. “But you’re only as good as your last deal — that’s what we always say in business. It’s important to maintain this. We have a long way to go.”
The mood is soaring, the league table capricious. “We’ve had some success over the last few weeks but that could change tomorrow,” Ghodoussi says. “The relegation battle is so tight and there’s so much movement,” says Staveley.
But the Geordie genie is out of its bottle and there is no putting it back.
“There isn’t,” says Ghodoussi. “We need to continue delivering and make the right decisions.”
Beside him, Staveley nods. “We just don’t want to let anybody down,” she says.
(Photos: Getty Images; graphic: Sam Richardson)
