An expert in football finance has dropped a big claim on the potential takeover of Newcastle United involving St James' Park.

Speaking to Football Insider, Kieran Maguire has suggested that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's (KSA) Public Investment Fund (PIF) may have to sell the stadium in order to avoid breaking Financial Fair Play (FFP) rules, if the deal between Mike Ashley and the KSA consortium were to go ahead. He outlined:

“It would be challenging for Newcastle because FFP was designed to prevent another Man City.

“It will act as an anchor to slow down the speed with which Newcastle could compete with the existing elite. That’s the whole rationale behind FFP. 

“It will be frustrating but I’d imagine that Newcastle will push things to the limit if the PIF takeover does occur.

“Financial fair play is ultimately linked to profit, profit is revenue minus costs.

“It could be that the PIF decides to sell St. James’ Park and the club makes a large amount of profit on the back of that.”

Should Newcastle sell St James' Park?

If the bid were to eventually go through, then Newcastle would no doubt have to be very careful when it comes to FFP.

The rules are in place so that they would not be able to splash out insane amount of cash straight away - essentially they can spend what they make, which may not be as much as the prospective new owners would want at first.

Nonetheless, given the history and size of St James' Park, it would likely not go down well with the Toon Army if the prospective new owners were to sell it, unless there was a better stadium being lined up in its place.

That said, if the Magpies were to find themselves in trouble with FFP for whatever reason, selling St James' Park would have to be considered an option in order to try to balance the books.

In other news, there has been a promising Saudi insight on the potential takeover!