Amanda Staveley exclusive: Leaving Newcastle, living with Huntington's and what comes next (2024)

“I’m devastated. It’s such a wonderful club, so it feels very bittersweet. It has become part of my DNA, something you love so much and don’t want to let go. It’s very painful.”

There is plenty more along these lines from Amanda Staveley, so if you are not a supporter of Newcastle United consider this due warning. The emotion is deep and rich and understandable because for seven years — trying and failing to buy the club, then trying and succeeding and then a maelstrom of work and achievement — Newcastle have been Staveley’s life, often to the detriment of family. And now she is gone and the adjustment is considerable.

Staveley leaves a legacy at St James’ Park, but also part of herself. Over coffee and mineral water in a hotel near her central London home, her conversation withThe Athletic is wide-ranging and deeply personal, covering:

• Her “sadness” at departing but a belief that Newcastle are in “incredibly safe hands”
• Why Eddie Howe is a “perfect” manager
• Living with Huntington’s disease
• The “very difficult” moments as Newcastle scrambled to avoid financial breaches in June
• Standing by her prediction that the club will soon challenge for the Premier League title
• The prospect of staying in football amid reports linking her with Tottenham Hotspur.

There is a lot to get through, but first: why has the woman who was the face and figurehead of Newcastle’s contentious Saudi Arabia-led takeover and its aftermathdecided to sell her minority shareholding?

Her answer begins with context. When the takeover was ratified by the Premier League in October 2021, it came with little notice and when Newcastle were flatlining on the pitch and stripped back off it. As well as holding a 10 per cent stake in the club (later diluted to around six per cent), Staveley and Mehrdad Ghodoussi, her husband, were Newcastle’s asset managers. It was full-time and all-consuming.

“One of the things we loved when we first took over was that we did pretty much every job,” Staveley says. “There just weren’t any staff so we were doing the commercial stuff, the director of football stuff, the buying, PR, fan engagement. We were doing the role of the chief executive and the Premier League stuff, constantly fighting while trying to build a relationship with other clubs.

“It was exhausting but you put everything into it because that was what it needed and it was what the fans deserved. And I feel bad because Lexi (Alexander), my wonderful son, suffered for three years because he didn’t get the attention he should have had, although he now loves Newcastle as much as we do.

“As we grew, we brought in an executive team and Darren Eales (the chief executive), but we were very much at the coalface because Newcastle was still under-resourced. As the club continues to expand it needs a management team that can be left to do their jobs. I’ve read on social media that there’s been some kind of fallout but that’s rubbish. I love my colleagues. It just became unfair for us to constantly be there.”

Nobody could claim the partnership did not work. Under the stewardship of Staveley and Ghodoussi, and powered by Howe’s brilliant coaching, Newcastle rose from the relegation positions and finished fourth and seventh in the Premier League. They got to a Carabao Cup final and qualified for the Champions League for the first time in 20 years. They competed and, more often than not, they won.

Perhaps the ending “might have been different if we had not been so hands-on initially”, Staveley says, or if they’d taken up an offer from Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) and Newcastle’s chairman, to take on a full-time executive role, but Staveley “felt that the right thing for Newcastle was to bring in someone with the right experience”. Eales, who joined Newcastle from Atlanta United in MLS, was that person.

So why not just sit on her investment and stay, enjoying the ride from the directors’ box with less stress? Here the professional morphs into something quite different. “I couldn’t do that,” Staveley says. “And, I’ll be honest, I have a degenerative disease in Huntington’s and I need to work.

“There’s actually some wonderful things that have come out about Huntington’s and a potential cure or the slowing down of the disease and its symptoms but every day is precious and I don’t want to waste time in case I don’t have a huge amount of time. I need to keep my brain active.”

Huntington’s is an inherited condition that affects the brain. Over time, it is usually fatal. Is she really comfortable talking about this?

“I am because it’s part of my life,” she says. “And I really believe that to keep a healthy mind, the fact that I work is very important. I feel like if I slow down, I will slow down in my mind. I’m actually doing very well and that has a lot to do with working hard and keeping my mind as active and challenged as possible.

“I’m a mum. I want to be around to see my grandkids. My mum died when she was 63. I’m 51 and you just never know. I’ve adapted my lifestyle. I don’t smoke any more, I barely drink, I look after myself. But only by challenging myself through work can I be that version of myself. I can’t take a step back.

“I always try to see it as a positive. Part of my disease is actually my superpower because it allows me to think in a way that other people just don’t think. I have incredible numeracy, I can analyse complex problems very quickly. And I hold myself to a very high standard. It’s my nature to be involved and that’s probably not fair on Newcastle’s executive team.”

The upshot is that Staveley will move on, which means a painful goodbye. She quashes the theory that this was always going to be a semi-temporary relationship, that once she had secured the financing to buy out Mike Ashley and had stabilised Newcastle she would cash in and look for something else.

“No, that’s absolute rubbish,” she says. “I’m heartbroken not to be there because I love the club more than anything; the fans, the community, everything. And I would wish to be there every day, but it’s also not fair. The club’s management team need to have the chance to deliver their business plan. We did a great job and it’s been a privilege to be part of it, but they need to be left to do their jobs, too.

“Maybe we were right for Newcastle for those few years. Maybe that’s what they needed. But I’d be useless just standing there doing nothing and it wouldn’t be fair on Darren if we’re always there telling them what we think. There’s processes and accountability and they’ll figure it out.”

Staveley and Ghodoussi were grafting until the last, working long hours on the sale of players before June 30, the end of the financial year. It was a strange, frantic counterpoint to the first post-takeover transfer window, when Newcastle spent £92million ($118m at current rates) on new players, more than any club in Europe, and Staveley and Ghodoussi did the hard yards, forging a close relationship with Howe, the head coach they hired. This time it was about meeting the Premier League’s profitability and sustainability rules (PSR).

“I knew what was coming in terms of me leaving but the fans and PIF deserved every focus of mine,” Staveley says. “Had I left before (the PSR deadline) and we’d breached, then that would have been bad. It was very, very difficult, but I was determined to make sure Darren has a clear runway.”

In the end, Newcastle cleared the decks by selling Yankuba Minteh to Brighton & Hove Albion and Elliot Anderson to Nottingham Forest, raising more than £60million, but it meant a stressful few days as a possible points-deduction loomed large. “My biggest concern was that we’d lose Alex (Isak) or Anthony (Gordon) because Liverpool chased him and both are extraordinary players,” Staveley says. “Negotiating is tough because you have to pretend it means nothing to you when it means everything.”

The club will feel different without Staveley and Ghodoussi. They were tight with Howe and his squad and always available to them. They attended every match, more or less, and were regular visitors to the dressing room. They were mobbed around Newcastle and constantly asked for selfies with fans. After the Ashley years, when the club was outsourced and aloof, that informality and intimacy were like a comfort blanket.

“You’ve made us all so proud” ⚫️⚪️

The @NUFC dressing room after they reached the League Cup final last season…

Episode One of We Are Newcastle United, streaming now on Prime Video 📺 pic.twitter.com/xTYz3PySNr

— Amazon Prime Video Sport (@primevideosport) August 14, 2023

“Maybe some of the lads will be relieved I’m not texting them every minute because they won’t feel like their mum or aunt is on their back all the time!” she says with a smile, but she is also weeping now. Staveley asks a member of staff for a tissue (she calls most people “love” or “darling”) and composes herself.

“I’ve been in the dressing room in tears on a few occasions and the players ended up giving me support!” she says, laughing now. “And then Eddie… wow. Sorry, I’m crying. He is extraordinary. He’s tough. There’s no detail he doesn’t look at. He is such a great ambassador for us.”

A testing couple of months have left Howe facing, in his own words, “a very difficult summer”. It is hard to overstate his importance in reviving the club, something reflected in the noise around who might succeed Gareth Southgate as England manager.

How does Staveley reflect on his methods and qualities, on their time together? “You can’t put aside his warm nature because it’s pivotal to how he manages,” she says. “He has so much trust from his colleagues and players because they know that everything he’s doing is about getting them to improve.

“It all comes from how hard he works — and when I say ‘he’, I’m also talking about Jason Tindall (Howe’s assistant) and the rest of his coaching team. It’s the work he does on the grass but it’s not just that, it’s all the way through: the training regimen, tactics, the support he offers players, making sure they’re sleeping well and not stressed. I learnt so much from him.

“I think everybody knows we have a close friendship but from a managerial point of view, I just feel he hits everything. He’s 11 out of 10 every day. That’s why England would want to take him.

“He has been the perfect manager for Newcastle. We’ve been so lucky to have had these two incredible managers at the club, one being Eddie and the other Becky Langley (manager of Newcastle’s women’s team). They have very similar characteristics and work ethics.”

Since saying farewell to Newcastle, Staveley has been inundated with messages from players and she pulls some of them up on her phone; one writes “I love you so much”, which demonstrates something quite telling about how the club have operated. Another describes himself as “devastated”. Another says, “You helped bring me to a place I now love”. Another: “Thank you for what you and Mehrdad did for the club and myself.” There are plenty more. Safe to say, it is not the usual way of things at Premier League clubs, but it is part of Newcastle’s story, where everybody has been tight-knit and aligned.

Staveley threw herself into Newcastle’s women’s setup, too. After years of being ignored or underfunded, the women’s team were officially brought under the club’s umbrella. Guided by Langley and Su Cumming, the head of women’s football, there were two consecutive promotions from the fourth tier into the Championship. Last season, the whole shebang went full-time professional, a first at their level. Last season, Staveley called them her “greatest passion”.

“I’m just very grateful to have been a little cog in this wheel,” she says. “I love those girls so much. I had some dark days at the beginning when we were going through transition and there was nothing there and you think, ‘God, is this going to work? What happens if we don’t succeed?’. I was saying the opposite to Becky: ‘As long as you’re trying, that’s all that matters’. They just did so well.

“It turns out that all they needed was a gentle push and a bit of financial support. I was talking to one of my girlfriends who is an ex-player and she was saying it’s about young girls in the north east feeling like they have a pathway, that they have the right to play football and that the support networks are in place.”

For both senior teams, the genie is out of the bottle and nobody wants Newcastle’s progress to stall. Does Staveley leave it in safe hands? “Oh yes, incredibly safe,” she says. “The Reuben family are like my family, and PIF are as well. Yasir is one of my best friends. They will treasure it as much as I treasure Newcastle. The club has all the ingredients and the thing I love about the Geordies is that they know how to stand up for themselves.”

The Reubens, who own 15 per cent of Newcastle to PIF’s 85 per cent, are among the most affluent people in Britain. PIF’s involvement automatically made Newcastle the wealthiest club in the world, although those riches — at least in PSR terms — are theoretical.

Staveley’s role was different. She was the financier, the deal-maker, but she was also Newcastle’s tone-setter, predicting the club would compete for the Premier League title and Champions League on day one of the takeover as fans danced outside St James’.

“I remember,” she says, laughing again. Does she stand by those words? “Winning the Premier League? God yeah! We don’t have the distraction of Europe this season and I know that’s hard for the fans, but it gives us a chance to get everything stable. We can really have a run at it.” Even now, everything is “we” and “us”.

This was the club, the potential, that Staveley saw when she first came to the ground as a guest of Rafa Benitez and his associates in October 2017 for a game against Liverpool. Pretty soon, she was bidding to buy Newcastle.

“I remember walking up to St James’ and it was just immediate,” she says. “I started to get goosebumps. It was the vibrancy, seeing the town. The people were so warm and friendly and you just felt like you were at home. There was a crazy feeling of, ‘Wow, this place is special’.

“I’ve joked about this to John (Henry) and Tom (Werner, the Liverpool owners), we kind of went there to piss them off because we had been trying to buy Liverpool and we couldn’t get it! But when we arrived there was just an immediate feeling of so much potential. I loved the stadium, this big cathedral on the hill, and it was so full and so passionate. It needed love and investment, but you could feel the excitement. I just thought, ‘There’s so much you could do’.”

Her first three attempts to buy Newcastle were rebuffed by Ashley. A source close to the billionaire retailer was quoted on Sky Sports News describing the process as “exhausting, frustrating and a complete waste of time”. Staveley, who had helped broker Sheikh Mansour’s deal for Manchester City in 2008, was dismissed as a publicity seeker, something she described at the time as “absurd” and “hugely hurtful”.

She didn’t give up. Staveley came back to the table, this time bringing PIF (and great controversy over Saudi’s human rights record) with her, but there would be 18 months of uncertainty and administrative long grass between agreeing a £305million fee with Ashley and the takeover being greenlit. At one stage, her group pulled out, with Staveley saying, “The Premier League made it so hard,” but talks continued about separation between PIF and the Saudi state and finally, it happened.

Why did she keep going?

“At every stage I had letters and emails from fans and I could see they were so determined to get the right ownership and a chance to compete,” she says. “It was very difficult at points. I got very depressed for a while. But I just thought that so long as there was support for doing this, we’d get there. But I’m tenacious by nature. I always felt that it was somehow inevitable, something I’ve just got to do.”

Now she must do something else. PCP Capital Partners, her investment fund company, has other projects and she will continue working with PIF, having played a significant role in LIV Golf’s rapprochement with the PGA Tour.

Could she return to football? A recent report for Bloomberg stated that PCP has raised around £500million and has been looking at future investments in the sport. It mentioned the possibility of buying a minority stake in Tottenham Hotspur and stated that “initial discussions”, with Rothschild & Co, an adviser to Spurs, had taken place. What, if anything, can she say about that?

“Not much, I’m afraid. My preference would have been to stay with Newcastle, but life doesn’t always work out exactly how you want it to. Nothing is going to replicate that. I fell in love with Newcastle, the club and the people and that can’t change, but I didn’t want to get in Newcastle’s way. It’s got to be about what’s best for Newcastle.

“Mehrdad and I are keen to be hands-on. We’re hard-working people, I love to be very busy and to engage and I love football. Very sadly, we have to move on to other projects and that might involve us taking a stake in another club or buying another club and that’s difficult. But it’s possible.

“I don’t know what my future holds, but you can never move on from the love I have for Newcastle and I would love to come back for matches. I’m a Geordie now. I’m a Yorkshire Geordie, but I will always have that chemistry and that love.”

It feels like the right place to finish — and, in any case, Staveley is bustle in human form, forever with another call to take or meeting to attend. But as she stands, she asks to end with a message for Newcastle fans.

“I can’t describe what they mean to me and I am just so incredibly grateful,” she says. “It means everything. They mean everything. Being around them and part of that wonderful club has meant the world. Please tell them: ‘Thank you so much for trusting us’.”

(Top photo: Stu Forster & Ian Forsyth/Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton)