Martin Samuel: The hero Newcastle deserves and the one it needs right now

The Times journalist Martin Samuel has cast a pointy finger of judgment towards the Premier League and the hypocrisy that's rife within.

He didn't just stop there either as he pointed out the hypocrisy of rival fans and his fellow journalists in a superb piece for The Times.

Newcastle United can boast of being "the world's richest club" - it's wildly inaccurate, but people swallow it up because it makes any failure on our end all the more noteworthy.

Samuel has set the record straight regarding our misnomer title

Martin Samuel has again set the record straight, pointing out that it doesn't matter how much money our owners have, Financial Fair Play or Profit and Sustainability, whatever you want to call it, prevent us from being the competitors we could be.

Samuel mentions how, were the FFP shackles off there's no way we'd be in ninth and cursing an injury crisis as we'd have a squad capable of dealing with such things. We'd also not be at risk of losing Sporting Director Dan Ashworth to Manchester United.

Then, most brilliantly of all, he calls out the fact that everyone says "dirty oil money" is ruining the game, but nobody has a problem with Sir Jim Ratcliffe's buy-in at Manchester United despite the fact that he made his fortune in ... oil. Seemingly, it is not dirty if you're an English white man, as Samuel points out.

Scrap FFP and free the beast!

Also mentioning how Manchester United sent their Sporting Director to Saudi Arabia to whip up some deals to the Saudi Pro League and nothing was mentioned, but the second Newcastle glanced that way, the Premier League moved to bring in rules to stop us trading over there.

There is a clear agenda against Newcastle, it's not a conspiracy, although there are certainly many conspiracies within the narrative, it's clear as day. FFP was designed to keep a lock on the "big six" - that group of teams who tried to screw over the Premier League by leaving and setting up a European Super League, yet despite that, still get preferential treatment. Why? Because they're a cartel who hold the real power and it needs to be broken up.

FFP needs to be scrapped to allow other clubs to break into that band of elites and knock them down a peg or two. If clubs want to run themselves into the ground then that's their own stupid fault. Take the shackles off and let's have a real fight.