Newcastle could look at sporting director who found Sadio Mane and Heung-Min Son

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Newcastle United have been told that they may have the option to bring in an experienced replacement for Dan Ashworth.

Ashworth has been placed on gardening leave ahead of a potentially £20m move to Man United and is Newcastle have began searching for a new sporting director.

Journalist Dean Jones has been speaking to GiveMeSport and suggested that former AS Monaco director Paul Mitchell is a possible candidate as an experienced director who scouted Sadio Mane and Heung-Min Son.

Newcastle want quality replacement for Ashworth

The Magpies were fully on board with Ashworth when he arrived and believed he could be the man to lead the club into a very successful long-term future, but that all came crashing down when he decided to leave.

Naturally that is a huge blow for Ashworth given he’s widely recognised as one of the best in the business, so Newcastle will be hoping to find someone even better as a replacement.

Both Richard Hughes of Bournemouth and Michael Edwards formerly of Liverpool have been mentioned as potential candidates though it doesn’t look like either are very likely to happen, especially the latter.

Instead, Newcastle could target Mitchell who has a vast experience of European football having worked with the French team as well as RB Leipzig where he helped to sign Matheus Cunha and Nordi Mukiele.

On Mitchell, Jones said: “Newcastle will obviously have to consider all the prospects that they could bring in. And while I don’t think at this stage Paul Mitchell is a leading candidate for that, again, they’ve got to be open-minded about what can happen. And there’s definitely a potential route in there if things go on a different tangent in the coming weeks.”

Mitchell’s record should encourage Newcastle

Newcastle’s ambitions is to be one of the biggest football clubs in the world and to do that they’re going to have to sign some of the best players in the world, but they’re also going to have to be smart with their money.

The Magpies don’t currently have the option to go out and splash £100m on a new star signing like some other Premier League teams, that would swallow up all of their budget.

So, they need someone who is going to help them seek out and discover hidden talents and players who are more affordable which is what Mitchell has been doing his whole career.

At Southampton he helped to bring in Sadio Mane, Dejan Lovren and Victor Wanyama, while at Tottenham it was Dele Alli, Heung-Min Son and Toby Alderweireld.

He has an incredible record of finding these top talented who weren’t exactly expensive at the time and it’s exactly the type of director Newcastle could look to replace Ashworth with.