Reporter claims former Arsenal chief Ivan Gazidis was linked with Newcastle CEO role

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Newcastle United finally announced the arrival of a new Chief Executive Officer last week, with Darren Eales set to arrive.

He will begin work at St James’ Park on August 6th, leaving his current role at MLS side Atlanta United.

The appointment of Eales has been heralded as a bit of a coup by the Newcastle owners, as they continue to make sensible decisions.

Eales has been at Atlanta ever since they were founded in 2014, and played a vital role in establishing them on the pitch and on a commercial level.

The Toon hierarchy will hope he has a similar impact in the North East, where he will take over the role vacated by Lee Charnley last year. Newcastle’s new owners have been running the club entirely since then, but will now be able to focus their attentions elsewhere.

Newcastle have slowly put together a rather impressive team. Eddie Howe arrived and had an exceptional start as manager. Then Dan Ashworth’s tenure as Sporting Director began, and he’s already having an impact. He’s one of the best around and will really help us in the coming years.

And now Darren Eales is on his way to run the business side of the club.

Newcastle go with Darren Eales, but Ivan Gazidis was linked

Following the announcement of Eales’ appointment, the Athletic’s Chris Waugh has provided some additional information on Newcastle’s CEO search.

“It’s an interesting choice because I think that people were thinking they were going to go for big hitters around Europe,” Waugh said on the latest episode of Pod On The Tyne.

“Ivan Gazidis was someone who was linked, former Arsenal director who’s now at AC Milan. Instead they’ve gone for Eales.”

As Waugh says, Gazidis used to be a major player at Arsenal. He was the Gunners’ chief executive, a role he started at the beginning of 2009.

He spent almost 10 years in the hot seat at the Emirates, leaving in late 2018 to join AC Milan.

Arsenal fans don’t have a lot of kind words to say about Gazidis, blaming him as one of the causes for the years of mediocrity they have suffered. He was the one who stood by Arsene Wenger for so long, then backed the wrong horse in Unai Emery as his replacement.

When he decided to leave Arsenal in 2018, there was no love lost in North London. Whether it would have been a similar story at St James’ Park remains to be seen.

He’s kicked off a revival at AC Milan, who won Serie A last season. It was their first title win since 2011.

However, we will never know how Gazidis would have done at Newcastle. Instead we’ve gone with Eales, and he sounds like he has the potential to be another fantastic appointment by the owners.