We are close now to the anniversary of when Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, the Thai who financed the miracle of Leicester City winning the Premier League, died in that dreadful helicopter crash near the club's King Power stadium.

And Leicester, it seems, are giving it another go. Vichai's son, Top Srivaddhanaprabha, has taken control and found a new coach, Brendan Rodgers, to rebuild the hope and inspiration that travelled so unbelievably well from Bangkok to the English midlands.

There are other clubs - Leicester's visitors today Newcastle, for one - who have dreams and nightmares about foreign intervention in the boardroom.

We really shouldn't be discussing sport in the context of business or the power of money not generated by the game itself. Leicester have Jamie Vardy, a success story from non-league soccer to the England national side.

Newcastle have a new No. 9, the muscular Brazilian Joelinton who left home at 14 to follow his personal dream, and left South America for Hoffenheim in Germany at 18.

Both clubs, Leicester and Newcastle, have beaten Tottenham this season. If ever Newcastle could harness the power of their fans - the faithful Geordies, who year upon unfulfilled year fill their 52,388-seater St James' Park stadium to capacity, despite what they regard as betrayal in the boardroom.

This weekend, as so many weekends under the 12-year ownership of Mike Ashley, Newcastle are a club, a community, of disbelievers.

Ashley is an Englishman, a big shot in the world of sports-kit marketing. But, in the North East, where Newcastle should be king, he is seen as a mercenary who never understood their dreams, their desire or their game.

On Thursday, yet another foreign group of wannabe Newcastle owners leaked a brochure claiming to be a bid to pay Ashley's £300 million (S$500 million) asking price.

The group, GACP Sports, amalgamates American merchandisers and Portuguese football knowledge, with a familiar English go-between, Peter Kenyon.

Kenyon was once the CEO at Manchester United in Alex Ferguson's time, and the CEO at Chelsea in Jose Mourinho's time. The leaked document has surprising errors - for example describing Newcastle's recently appointed manager Steve Bruce as a coach with "unprecedented success in Europe".

That would, perhaps, be his predecessor, Rafa Benitez, the Spaniard who found it so unpleasant working for Ashley that he quit this summer and took up employment in China.

Fair enough. The managers are mercenaries too these days. The Fergie quarter-century stint at Old Trafford is replaced by the three-year cycle of the likes of Mourinho.

Bruce is a Geordie Boy himself, born and bred in Newcastle. He was apparently nowhere near the top of the list to replace Benitez but, while his tenure lasts, he will throw his heart and soul into team building.

And keep his head down in the boardroom. After the brochure landed in the e-mail of broadcasters and newspapers, Bruce admitted he knew nothing of any takeover.

"It's news to me," Bruce said. "You're asking the wrong person."

Ask him instead if Joelinton Cassio Apolinario de Lira (thankfully simply known by his first name) will line up at Leicester. Or if Andy Carroll, the Geordie-born centre-forward who left the club as a hero, had an unsuccessful time at Liverpool and an injury-littered seven years at West Ham, might step up from the bench to join or replace Joelinton.

Those are judgment calls Bruce can make. The ownership issues are way above his pay grade.

Even Rodgers, the former Swansea, Liverpool and Celtic manager, is only a hireling whose time at Leicester will last as long as the Srivaddhanaprabha family believe in him.

Rodgers is unlikely to conjure up another EPL title. He is not Claudio Ranieri and, anyway, the players (Vardy and Co) rebelled against Ranieri , who is now back in Rome following short, painful stints at Nantes and Fulham.

Ultimately, it comes down to ownership and players. Leicester appear to have unearthed a ball-playing central defender, Caglar Soyuncu, to replace Harry Maguire, who quit last month to join Manchester United.

Leicester extracted a record £75 million for Maguire and acquired Soyuncu, from the Bundesliga's Freiburg, for a quarter of the price.

Newcastle's unpopular, often absent English owner, has bartered for years over the profit he wants for the club he bought on a whim.

Two Gulf bidders, the latest a cousin of Manchester City's owner, turned out to be a mirage. Leicester are stable, Newcastle caught in a vortex of broken promises.

Football, in that respect, is a business that either rots or grows from the top down.