Mixed feelings imo. Of course there will be a respect from some given he took over a club going nowhere under a deeply unpopular board in what's now the Championship and at risk of going out of business in the late 80s/early 90s to a genuine Premier League power player, one that should really have won a league title, as well as reaching 2 FA Cup finals in the late 90s and reaching the Champions League again in the early 2000s under Bobby Robson, attracted a lot of big name players and modernised St James' Park twice over to its current capacity.
Where it gets more complex is that a lot of his finance was put in from loans and when the club was floated as a PLC in the mid-90s, it was used to pay them back, mostly through fans who brought the shares whose value plummeted. Picking a fight with fans over stadium seats, raising ticket/shirt prices, having his son slag off the fans in the infamous Fake Sheikh debacle, the club being in a bad way financially in 2007 when Hall cashed out and the like didn't help.
I think it looks better now than it did both for the fact the 90s were such an iconic time in Newcastle's history and the Mike Ashley era that followed was a slog.
I like this video from just before the Saudi takeover went through exploring the nuance.
I'm sure that when the offer came in from Noel Gallagher to do a secret set in 2025 Emily personally picked up the phone and blew raspberries down the line at him.