Newcastle United are on the lookout for a new Sporting Director after Dan Ashworth’s announcement that he wants to join Manchester United.
Newcastle had been left in a tricky position when the director they hired to basically guide the club in the next five to 10 years suddenly up and left to join a Premier League rival after not even two years at the club.
As a possible replacement, Newcastle had identified Paul Mitchell who is currently out of a job and journalist Ben Jacobs told GiveMeSport that the director would prefer a move to the Premier League.
Newcastle want director with brilliant track record
Mitchell has previously worked at Southampton, Tottenham, RB Leipzig and most recently AS Monaco where has helped to unearth some of the best footballing talents of the modern era.
Some prime examples of his work are bringing Sadio Mane to Southampton, Heung-Min Son to Tottenham as well as Matheus Cunha and Nordi Mukiele to Leipzig.
With Ashworth now gone, Newcastle would ideally like to hire someone with a similar record in the game and who can slot straight in and immediately get to work, continuing what the former Brighton man had started.
One thing that should work in Newcastle favour, other than the fact Mitchell would like to work in England, is the resources that they now have under the new ownerships as it’s one of the most exciting projects in football and very hard to turn down.
On Mitchell, Jacobs said: “There’s a few names that Newcastle may look to. One could be Tiago Pinto, who’s outgoing at Roma. Paul Mitchell is a free agent as well. Manchester United have considered him in the past and he would like a Premier League job ideally.
“I think that what we saw from Newcastle when they employed Ashworth is that they put a heavy emphasis on Premier League experience too.”
Newcastle must make the right appointment
Mitchell looks like a brilliant candidate for the job and obviously has a proven track record, but Newcastle will want to avoid the same mistake they made with hiring Ashworth as director.
Ideally talks would be had about the future and what Mitchell’s long-term plans are to ensure that they don’t end up in a similar situation to the one that they are currently in.
Of course, whoever Newcastle decide to hire they will be well protected anyway as they are still demanding £20m for Ashworth and after the whole debacle it wouldn’t be a surprise to see them protect this new director even more heavily.
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