Newcastle United supporters have taken a huge challenge on in seeking to transform their well-worn contempt for Mike Ashley into a positive bid to take over the club themselves. The Newcastle United Supporters Trust (NUST) launched its “Yes We Can” campaign yesterday, sending emails about the proposal to 40,000 fans - they have so many contact details partly because the petition they set up last week, following Ashley’s staggeringly ill-judged proposal to rename St James’ Park, was signed, within days, by 20,000 people. The appealing idea of supporter-ownership has been nurtured by fans at many British clubs since football’s commercialisation in the 1990s, borne partly out of the realisation that a few businessmen were making fortunes for themselves out of owning the shares in clubs. British fans became more knowledgeable about the game’s finance and structure, and awareness grew of great clubs elsewhere which are not pure businesses, but supporter-owned sporting co-operatives: true clubs. In their passionate, well-produced campaign literature, NUST make predictable, valid references to Real Madrid and Barcelona, owned by member-fans who elect a president, and to the Bundesliga, where all clubs except two are majority owned by supporters. After months of discussions with interested parties, Newcastle United Supporters Trust (NUST) is launching the ‘Yes We Can’ Campaign which aims to raise funds to lead a fans buy out at St James’ Park. The Trust will be revealing partners over the coming days but has in place a buy out structure led by local firms and renowned names in the financial world. The Trust is mailing out to over 40,000 supporters to ask them if and how they want to buy into the campaign to lead a city-wide bid to buy back the club. There are a number of ways supporters can buy into the model which has been dubbed by the financial community as the ‘Barcelona on the Tyne’ which would see a ‘democratisation’ of the club to ensure that the current state of the club would not be repeated.

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