For my sins, I am a Newcastle United fan. Watching them play has been hard graft for a decent while. Fun things like going deep in the UEFA Cup now seem like very quaint memories. There’s renewed sporting optimism up on Tyneside, with a helping of geopolitical pessimism, now that the club is owned by Saudi Arabia (for what it’s worth, the previous owner Mike Ashley, has been regularly accused of paying staff below minimum wage, so the human rights bar is already unspeakably …