NUFC NEW TRAINING GROUND AND AIRVIEW PARK

Written by Andrew Page

As the end of the transfer window came into view, many Newcastle fans had been given cause to be at their most pessimistic since the club’s takeover in October 2021. Last season’s mediocre twelfth placed finish has been followed by the departure of the first manager in living memory to win a trophy, along with several of the star players who helped him achieve this feat. Their places have been taken by a manager that almost no one on Tyneside has heard of, along with some untested young players who have never played in the Premier League. Reports earlier in the year had suggested that the Saudi Public Investment Fund were looking to sell part of the club, with some articles claiming that the Saudis were no longer interested in Newcastle United. Local journalists briefed by club sources insisted that this wasn’t the case, instead emphasising the obstacles to progress presented by financial fair play rules and regulations. But this didn’t explain why the Saudi ownership have done nothing to build a new stadium or develop a new training ground over the course of the last 5 years – two important pieces of infrastructure that are unaffected by any restrictions on spending imposed by the Premier League. Fans who questioned the ownership’s commitment, and therefore questioned the club’s long-term prospects, had some justification for their viewpoint.  

But with just 2 days until the first game of the 26/27 season, and 11 days until the transfer window closed, the gloom appeared to lift for a large number of supporters.

On 20th August, news broke that the club have agreed to purchase the land for a new training ground. Chris Waugh of The Athletic wrote that “Newcastle United have agreed to purchase the land on which they intend to build their new £190million “world-class” training complex” opining that this was “a monumental post-takeover moment for Newcastle.”

Waugh explained the significance of the agreement:

“The £190m investment in this project does not actually bring about a direct financial return for the club or the owners. Whereas a new stadium or a redeveloped St James’ Park would do that, this is purely pouring money into ensuring Newcastle improve their facilities.” 

It follows that the Saudi state must be committed to the project at Newcastle, and given the resources at their disposal, the long-term prospects for the club must suddenly look very good.  

Looking at the reaction from fans, journalists, and local politicians, this seems to be the prevailing view on Tyneside. 

For those taking a more circumspect view of things, there’s plenty of reason for at least some degree of scepticism. For one thing, this isn’t the first time since the takeover that there’s been an announcement about large scale investment from Saudi Arabia into the North East.  

In May 2023, it was announced that direct flights between Riyadh and Newcastle would be chartered. The announcement came at a North East Economic Forum event, attended by Saudi Ambassador to the UK Prince Khalid bin Bandar al Saud. The fact that a diplomat like Prince Khalid was linked to the announcement lent a lot of credibility to the proposal, but regular direct commercial flights from Newcastle to the Kingdom have never happened.  

In May 2024, Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden claimed that $3 billion of investment from Saudi Arabia would be made in the North East, with an accompanying press release saying that this investment would sustain 2000 jobs. The Local Democracy Service asked the Cabinet Office to clarify what that investment related to or where the affected jobs were, but they weren’t given a response. More than 3 years later, there’s been no further news on this. 

In December 2024, Prime Minister Kier Starmer visited Saudi Arabia and announced a collaborative project between North East Universities and research institutes in Saudi Arabia to create clean hydrogen. This announcement could hardly have come from a higher authority, but we are yet to hear of any more developments on this project either.  

At around the same time, we were told that the Saudi PIF were on the point of purchasing a 49% share in Newcastle Airport. This never came to fruition. 

Previous reports on a new multi-club model and possible new stadium have been in a similar vein, as has news on a new training ground: 

In February 2022, then minority stakeholder Amanda Staveley and her husband Mehrdad Ghodoussi told The Athletic that they were “looking at sites” for a purpose-built, world- class training ground, but warned that it “will probably take three years, maybe a little bit more”.

A number of updates followed, including a tweet from Daily Mail journalist Craig Hope on 5th July 2022, which stated that a site next to the racecourse north of the city had been identified as a possible location, and a local firm of architects had completed impressive drawings for a new complex. But after that there were only vague and intermittent updates from journalists, until  23rd January 2025, when Hope exclusively revealed that ‘world renowned architects Populous are set to design Newcastle’s new training ground’. Once again, land by the racecourse to the north of the city was pinpointed as the most likely site for construction work to start.

This exclusive came nearly 2 and a half years after Hope initially revealed plans for a training ground. The probable site was still the same, but a different architect was now involved, and this time they were yet to complete the designs. If anything, things seemed to have moved backwards. On 4th March 2025, the club’s then-CEO Darren Eales indicated that a site was still yet to be selected, saying: “We’re at the early stages and have to look at all viable possibilities.” 

A new update arrived in January 2026 with Craig Hope claiming at least his third “exclusive” on a potential training ground. This time he wrote that the club was close to announcing plans for a new state of the art £200m training ground, with land at Woolsington Hall to be purchased from former Newcastle United chairman Sir John Hall. 

No further news followed until the announcement on 20th August. The change between now and then seems to be that while in January Newcastle were “ready to purchase” the site, there is now “an agreement to purchase it”. How much money Hall is set to receive from the club isn’t known, but we know that he made an unsuccessful attempt to sell the estate for £2m back in 2013.  

Another difference is that, rather than giving briefings on potential developments with the training ground to local journalists, the club have put an announcement on the website and supplied some quotes from CEO David Hopkinson. Why we’ve been given this news before Hall has even received his money hasn’t been made clear. Back in April 2020, Hope had written that the reason the announcement of the Saudi state’s takeover of the club had been delayed was because “Saudi custom is to wait until completion before announcement”. He hasn’t told us why this custom isn’t being observed here.  

Hopkinson has put his name to several quotes this time around, but the announcement has still been accompanied by plenty of positive briefings to the local press about the overall state of the club, which have been enthusiastically written up by local journalists. 

The Independent’s Mark Douglas wrote that the owners are “steadfast”, “committed”, and “measured” – not adjectives usually associated with the spectacularly corrupt and incompetent autocrats that own Newcastle United. According to Douglas they also value the club at £2 billion – twice the valuation that Forbes currently place on Premier League rivals Aston Villa. They want “spades in the ground” for a new stadium project by 2030. The new training ground will be world class. A new kit sponsorship deal has also been announced, and a whole “raft of major sponsorship deals are in the pipeline”. The women’s team is expected to achieve promotion. There’s a “big budget” that has been set aside for the academy.  

There was no mention of any potential new signings arriving in Douglas’ propaganda blitz, but 2 signings arrived at a combined cost in excess of £100m before the transfer window closed, while the team made a promising start to their Premier League season. With so much good news coming all at once, fans may be inclined to forget previous unfulfilled promises. 

Perhaps this really is the start of some large-scale investment into infrastructure in the region by the Saudi PIF. If that’s the case, then it’s worth considering how that investment might affect the local area. 

NUFC Fans Against Sportswashing have previously explored how local businesses and Newcastle City Council have scrambled to ready themselves to receive investment from Saudi Arabia since the 2021 takeover. Even though pre-takeover commitments on investment in the region made to the council haven’t been fulfilled, businesses and council officers have still worked to position themselves to receive Saudi largesse, should the taps ever be turned on. 

Some of this activity has been focused on the Air View business park, which is located out on the edge of the city’s boundaries, on sparsely populated land right next to the airport.  

The business park is owned by Tynexe Commercial Developments, who are controlled by Newcastle city council. It’s made up of a fairly non-descript looking set of buildings, but its website advertises itself as “one of the region’s most strategically important developments” – with the hope being that the park’s status as an enterprise zone, and its location right next to the airport and the A1 will be viewed favourably by investors. 

The business park is so close to the Woolsington Hall estate that it is only separated by a through road. A redeveloped training ground and the business park could effectively operate as one site, should all the relevant parties decide that was desirable. 

Local entrepreneur Ammar Mirza has been heavily involved in promoting Air View Park. In 2018 he was in a legal dispute with the council over a HMO he owned, successfully appealing a conviction related to licencing required for the property. He seems to have been on better terms with the council at other times - in 2008 he was appointed as a non-executive director at the council’s arm’s length social housing provider Your Homes Newcastle, a position he held for nine years. He sits on the Business and Economy advisory board for the North East Mayoral Authority, and he currently serves as the High Sheriff of Tyne and Wear for 2026/27, which officially involves supporting the crown and judiciary, but also includes assisting local charities and community foundations.  

He collected a CBE in 2014 for services to business and the community in the North East, and a profile of him in the Northern Insight magazine said that he has “arguably done more than anyone else to help future generations realise their ambitions and raise their aspirations.” 

He also doesn’t seem afraid of the limelight – he hosts a weekly radio show on Spice FM, and in 2019 he let the local press know that although he wouldn’t stand for election to be North of Tyne Mayor, he thought he would be the best candidate. 

Mirza chairs a not-for-profit social enterprise company called Asian Business Connexions (ABC), which has been based at Air View Park since 2025. Its website says that the company’s main aim is to address inequality, while promoting community cohesion and inclusivity. 

Another role Mirza fulfils is chairing an organisation called the SME Centre of Excellence, which has heavily promoted AirView Park. A post on the company’s blog on 5th November 2024 stated that:  

“AirView Park, strategically located at Newcastle International Airport, is an innovative business hub designed to serve as a global launchpad for companies, particularly those from Saudi Arabia, looking to expand into the UK and beyond.” 

Mirza himself has been to Saudi Arabia twice in 2024, and gave local media an unambiguously positive review of his time there, apparently untroubled by the glaring contradictions that must have presented themselves to an advocate for inclusivity.  

In November 2023 Mirza had also met with an organisation called Saudi Business Links (SBL) in Newcastle, taking the company’s delegation to St James’ Park for the match against Chelsea. SBL had also sponsored the previous season’s game against Chelsea in December 2022.  

A later paragraph on the SME blog confirms that a business partnership centred on AirView Park had been agreed with SBL, saying:

“Through its collaboration with Saudi Business Links, led by Ali Alwabel, AirView builds a seamless bridge for Saudi businesses looking to expand in the UK. This strategic setup, coupled with robust partnerships, empowers Saudi entrepreneurs with the resources and networks needed to thrive in the UK. By aligning with Saudi Vision 2030, AirView helps Saudi businesses expand globally and achieve their growth ambitions.” 

Alwabel had also been in Newcastle earlier in 2023, delivering a talk to a North East Automative Alliance meeting at Newcastle airport in July.  

This all sounds relatively anodyne as far as dealings with Saudi Arabia go, but an article in Intelligence Online provided more details on the collaboration with Alwabel and SBL. Intelligence Online is a daily publication dedicated to global intelligence and diplomatic affairs. The information it provides is evidently highly valued by its audience – an annual subscription will set you back at least £1150.00 per year. Since the Saudi state took control of the club, articles related to Newcastle United have featured in its pages several times.  

On 4th April 2024, Intelligence Online published an article adding some background to Ali Alwabel’s history which was not apparent from reading either Mirza’s blog or the SBL website. Alwabel is a retired Saudi naval officer who worked for the arms company Boeing’s Riyadh branch between 2014 and 2017. From there he moved to the French arms exporter ODAS, helping to deliver on the Saudi French defence deal. By then he had already set up his consultancy firm SBL, and by 2024 he was representing Pakistan’s Karachi shipyard, who wanted to land contracts to build warships for Saudi Arabia.  

He currently has a role as an official spokesman for the Saudi government, and doubtless the recently signed mutual defence pact signed between Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey will be of great interest to him.   

Not many people will be aware that one of Newcastle’s recent home matches was sponsored by a company belonging to a Saudi Arabian arms dealer.  

Intelligence Online mentioned SBL’s visit to Newcastle in late 2023, claiming that both Mirza and Alwabel had been appointed by PIF to “expand its economic presence in the Newcastle region”. 

According to the article, AirView Park was to “house the offices of PIF companies in the North East of England” under the leadership of both Mirza and Alwabel.  

Sports event company Sela was set to open a branch at the business park, as were PIF subsidiary Sabic and Saudi company Alfanar.  

In keeping with much of the Saudi ownership’s time at Newcastle, none of these supposed plans ever happened, with Sela opening a UK office in London instead, while Sabic sold its North East plant on Teesside in 2025.  

But if PIF really are set to invest nearly £200m just across the road from AirView Park, could any plans the investment fund may have had for the business park be revitalised? 

Newcastle Central and West MP Chi Onwurah welcomed last week’s news on the training ground tweeting “great to see investment in our club in our city!”  

Her constituency contains the Pearson Engineering factory, which is owned by the Israeli state, and is less than 6 miles away from AirView Park. Onwurah says she has frequently raised concerns with the chief executive of the company, who has kept up a regular correspondence with her. The factory has insisted to her that it does not supply the Israel Defence Forces. However, they do supply weapons elsewhere in the Middle East, and they were represented at the 2024 World Defence Show in Riyadh, which is also where Alwabel signed his agreement with Karachi shipyard. 

In October 2018 Onwurah gave her support for an end to arms sales to Saudi Arabia, and February 2021 she repeated this stance, highlighting the massive humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen. With the conflict in Yemen looking likely to erupt again in the near future, Onwurah would surely take an interest if there was any hint that someone like Alwabel could be operating at a business park just outside her constituency.  

I would expect that some supporters would conclude that this development would be a good thing, reasoning that the more involved PIF are in the city, the better the prospects for the club. They mightn’t mind investment into the local defence industry either, if that were ever to materialize.  

Andrew Feinstein has campaigned against the arms trade for decades and has spoken at 3 NUFC Fans Against Sportswashing meetings. He has explored the colossal levels of corruption in the arms trade, particularly where Saudi Arabia is involved, and he has investigated the Al Yamamah arms deal between Britain and Saudi Arabia in some detail. The agreement was the biggest arms deal in British history, valued at about £43 billion, of which a massive £6 billion was paid in bribes. £1 billion of those bribes went to Prince Bandar bin Sultan. He was also given a gift by BAE Systems of an airbus painted in the colours of his favourite American football team the Dallas Cowboys. The British taxpayer paid for the maintenance of Prince Bandar’s plane until at least 2007. 

Feinstein has explained how Tony Blair intervened to close the resulting corruption investigation, claiming that it had to stop on national security grounds because the Saudis had threatened that if the investigation continued there would be “blood on the streets of London”. A member of the Saudi royal family, who Feinstein said was probably Prince Bandar bin Sultan, had effectively threatened the people of the United Kingdom. 

This is relevant to Newcastle United because Prince Bandar’s son is Prince Khalid, who was the Saudi ambassador to the UK between 2019 and 2025. The ambassador already had a link to the North East prior to the takeover, through his marriage to Lady Cuthbert, the niece of Ralph Percy, the current and 12th Duke of Northumberland.

The Athletic reported that he asked Foreign Secretary James Cleverley for an update on the takeover’s progress in May 2020. According to WhatsApp messages sent by Staveley at the time, Prince Khalid also spoke to Crown Prince bin Salman about the takeover on two occasions in August 2020 and even offered to send a letter to the Premier League claiming that PIF was separate from the Saudi state.  

According to Intelligence Online, Prince Khalid had pushed for Saudi company Alfanara to invest £1 billion into the Lighthouse Green Fuels project in Teesside. Alfanara was one of the companies that Intelligence Online claim was planned to be housed at AirView Park under Alwabel and Mirza’s leadership. Maybe this could have been a topic of conversation when Mirza met Prince Khalid at the North East Economic Forum (NEEF) event at Lumley Castle in Durham in May 2023. A photo from the evening on the NEEF website shows Mirza grabbing a selfie with the ambassador. A separate image shows Prince Khalid in conversation with Newcastle’s then chief executive Darren Eales. When Al Rumayyan lifted the Carabao Cup at Wembley on 16th March 2025, Prince Khalid was standing behind him, with Eales at his side.

Much still remains unknown and unresolved regarding the PIF’s intentions for Newcastle United, even 5 years since they took control of the club.  

New council leader Colin Ferguson gave a more cautious welcome to the news on the training ground than we’ve seen elsewhere, saying that “any planning application that comes forward [must be] properly consulted upon and that those living in the area [must] have their say" and “whatever moves forward must be to the benefit of all the city." 

Hopefully these considerations will also include all possible implications for the council-controlled business park which is adjacent to the Woolsington Hall site.

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