Newcastle's season has been quite the journey.Steve Bruce's men broke their transfer record at the beginning of it to sign Joelinton, but despite that, they've played some of the worst football in the league.The Magpies' current average possession stat sits at just 41.9%, a number that is comfortably the worst in the entire division. That hasn't stopped interest from overseas, however.A few months ago the Saudi Arabian Prince Investment Fund registered a £300m bid to buy the club from Mike Ashley.The current owner gleefully accepted it before another bid of £350m was made by American entrepreneur Henry Mauriss.PIF are still the undoubted favourites in becoming the majority shareholders of the club but if and when they get the chance to finally let Ashley hand over the reins is a question no one can really answer.
Richard Keys seems to think it'll happen by Friday while journalist Mark Douglas says we may have to wait until early August at the latest.However, this week, another cause for delay arose out of nowhere.Saudi Arabia banned beIN Sports from their country, also fining the broadcaster that illegally showed Premier League matches a massive £2m. That is something that reportedly shocked beIN and it isn't yet too clear what sort of impact this will have on PIF's plans to buy the Magpies.Investigative journalist Matt Slater took to Twitter to provide an update immediately after, revealing that prominent Saudi's wanted a TV deal done elsewhere, without the assistance of beIN.He said:
Chaos is certainly an understatement here.
GIVEMESPORT'S Matt Dawson says...
It's now been three weeks since it was initially claimed that a TV deal would need to be done in order to satisfy the Premier League.
In nod things through, it appeared the top-flight wanted to get something out of the deal, a slither or rather, a large portion of money.
It was unsurprising news but with beIN Sports now being banned in Saudi Arabia, they have absolutely zero chance of securing a deal with the Premier League.
As it happens, a different sort of agreement will now have to be settled upon.
It appears that an arrangement will now have to be concluded with a Saudi broadcaster instead, which is just as well given tearing up their contracts with beIN went against exactly what they needed to do.
It's just as well KSA have a contingency plan in place because otherwise, we'd have to wait even longer for this takeover to go through, that's providing it definitely gets a green light.