Logan shares views on football club owners

SPORTS broadcaster Gabby Logan is “trying to see the positives” in the takeover of Newcastle United but admits she is uneasy at the club she supports having Saudi-backed owners.

Amanda Staveley’s consortium, which comprises the financier’s PCP Capital Partners, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and the Reuben Brothers, has just celebrated the first anniversary of the £305million takeover.

Logan, who is a long-time Newcastle United fan and began her broadcasting career in the city, said she wants to see the team do well but questions about the source of the club’s finance “doesn’t always sit very well with people”.

She added: “It is really difficult to not say that the sport is at the moment going through a period where you’ve got what looks like sportswashing going on with certain kind of entities and countries that are trying to project itself on the world stage through sport.”

Logan was speaking at the Cheltenham Literature Festival to promote her new book The First Half, in which she writes about the death of her brother, her early years in broadcasting and facing sexism.

She added of the situation at Newcastle: “As a fan I want the team to do well, I want the manager to be a nice person, who he seems to be, and the players to play well.

“Obviously where the money comes from is something that doesn’t always sit very well with people, and quite rightly. What they’re doing which is very clever and it’s putting a lot into the community and the foundation, and I am patron of the foundation.

“So, I’m trying to see the positives.”