'Fair play to her': Amanda Staveley's biggest critic praises Newcastle co-owner after latest news

Newcastle United fans are still coming to terms with the fact that Amanda Staveley and Mehrdad Ghodoussi will soon be selling off their minority stake in the club.

The pair have become heroes to the fans since Amanda Staveley fronted the PIF-backed takeover in 2021. Staveley was installed as the face of the club while the PIF got comfortable with the day-to-day of running a football club and while they built up a team that could run the club.

Now that the board has finally taken shape after a misstep in the form of Dan Ashworth, it looks like it's time for Amanda Staveley and husband Mehrdad Ghodoussi to step away from the club.

We've no doubt that the two, while no longer owners, won't be too far from the club and that they will continue to follow the developments of the project they helped put together.

Simon Jordan is impressed with how Staveley has performed her role

While Newcastle fans instantly took to "Wor Mandy" there was one man who never seemed to pass up an opportunity to have a dig, and that was TalkSPORT's Simon Jordan.

In Jordan's defence, he was never outright critical of Staveley just for the sake of it, but at times it did feel he was just being contrarian for the sake of it, but we still didn't expect his latest TalkSPORT speech on the Newcastle owner following the revelation that she's due to step down.

“Amanda got them in the door. They bought Newcastle and you look at it for around £300 million, you look at a team in the Premier League for £300 million. When you look at clubs being sold for £2.5b, it’s a great deal. It’s a great deal.

“And she was instrumental in that, but it wasn’t her money. So with all due respect, she was clever at manipulating the circumstances to get people that wanted to buy a football club. She orchestrated a deal. She got 10% shareholding out of it. She’s probably cashed out very nicely at that. Fair play to her.”

Darren Eales will pick up from Amanda Staveley

This is the latest in a run of complimentary things Simon Jordan has said about Newcastle. Am I just missing the negative ones or has he softened on us?

We are still waiting for a definitive answer on where Amanda Staveley's 6% share will go, but it has been reported that the PIF are likely to buy her out leaving them with an 86% share in the club with the Reuben family owning the other 14%.

CEO Darren Eales will pick up whatever duties Amanda Staveley had left as she has gradually phased herself out of the club.