Simon Jordan has criticised Newcastle United’s lack of tact regarding the apparent leaked images of the club’s new green and white shirt.

The away shirt, leaked by the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph, suggests that kit suppliers Castore appear to have opted for a design that resembles the jersey of the Saudi Arabia national team.

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The design comes just months after the club’s controversial £305million takeover by the state’s Public Investment Fund.

While the design of the shirt has not been confirmed by the club, the move hasn’t sat well with Simon Jordan.

Speaking on White and Jordan, he said: “There’s no tact behind this. There’s no notion that, this isn’t what it is.

“This is a mock-up of the Saudi Arabia kit – well, it’s bloody close isn’t it?

“I guarantee that that kit would never, ever have been conceived if the ownership model wasn’t the ownership model that it is.

“The fact that the ownership model is Saudi Arabian, the fact that it’s owned by a nation state, the fact that the kit is as close as you can get to the Saudi Arabian national team are all just coincidences, are they?”

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“If this is right and it’s not some made up, divisive individual creating a look that’s never going to manifest itself, then not only are they owning a football club that they shouldn’t have owned in the first place in my view, they’re now saying ‘we’re going to do what everyone was frightened of’.

“We’re going to leverage it, we’re going to make it about perpetuating our values and we’re playing in a Saudi Arabian kit while Newcastle play away for 19 games a season, of which the matches are being broadcast around the world which is precisely what they wanted and bought the football club for.”

Jordan added: “They did not buy this football club because they like Newcastle.

“They bought it for a regime, ratification, soft influence for the way that these countries run.

“The argument that it’s not nation state; nation state is not an issue. There are no Premier League rules that say you can’t be owned by a nation state.

“The reason that the Premier League put this smokescreen up about ‘we want separation from the state’, is because they knew that this particular one was going to be challenging because of the human rights record.

“They hid behind that and made it about something that it wasn’t.

“Then they say they got separation; how on earth could you possibly have got separation? The fund is owned by the crowned prince of Saudi Arabia!”