Inside Newcastle United’s post-Dan Ashworth world – and what they do next

Two years ago, when Amanda Staveley and Mehrdad Ghodoussi were interviewed by The Athletic, they spoke about what Newcastle United required from their incoming sporting director. By that point, it was an open secret Dan Ashworth would be joining them from Brighton & Hove Albion — even if no one was confirming it publicly — and they described the appointment as a “key hire” for a club who had been operating with a skeleton staff.

It was fourth months into Newcastle’s transformative, game-changing takeover, and a few weeks after a manic transfer window in which Staveley and Ghodoussi, the club’s 10 per cent co-owners (and asset managers), had taken the lead as part of a transfer committee, working through long nights to complete deals. On the pitch, Eddie Howe’s team had started to win, but off it, the scale of the task was still becoming apparent.

Everything had been stripped back under Mike Ashley’s ownership; plenty of talented people worked for the club — ‘plenty’ is the wrong word, given the tiny numbers — but the glass ceiling was low and ambition stunted. Lee Charnley was the managing director, but there was no CEO and no sporting director; there was no executive team to speak of, and certainly nobody with elite footballing knowledge. St James’ Park had been riddled with paranoia, a place where the default setting was survival mode. People who worked there spoke about keeping their heads down, getting to 4pm and then going home, thankful if nothing had gone wrong.

Ghodoussi discussed what they had found. “We have all the verticals within the football operation side but they seem to be in silos,” he said. In other words, departments — such as the first team, academy and recruitment, for example — were not communicating with each other enough; there was no identity and little in the way of a common cause, apart from getting to tea time intact. It was build to survive, rather than build to thrive.

So what did Newcastle need from Ashworth? “It’s really important to bring in somebody who is an architect,” Ghodoussi said, “somebody who is going to construct and build a foundation which, to be honest, is not there currently. It’s the person who drives the football operation, who creates the structure. It’s like building a house. If you don’t have the right foundations, it will fall down. That’s why the sporting director role is so important.”

With Ashworth now on gardening leave and heading for Manchester United — pretty soon he’ll be “the most-skilled landscape gardener in the country,” Paul Barber, the Brighton chief executive, says — the question is where this all leaves Newcastle and how much their requirements have shifted.

To continue Ghodoussi’s analogy: Ashworth the builder has reinforced the foundations and connected all the rooms, but he leaves before the roof is finished and with the scaffolding still up. A long-term job is incomplete.

Internally, nobody is doubting the direction of travel. Staveley recently told The Athletic that Newcastle remain committed to “competing for everything and winning a much-yearned-for trophy,” but with their options limited in January by concerns over ensuring they comply with the Premier League’s profitability and sustainability rules (PSR), Howe’s team eighth in the Premier League after a tough, disrupted season and Ashworth jumping ship, the scale of ascent has understandably levelled off.

Much of the debate around Ashworth’s move to Old Trafford has centred on his involvement in transfers, but this was never his speciality. Yes, he got involved in club-to-club negotiations, yes he was part of the delegation that travelled to Italy to complete the ill-starred signing of Sandro Tonali from AC Milan, and yes he did speak to agents.

Still, like everything to do with football operations, recruitment ultimately fell under his responsibility, even if Ashworth’s real skill lay elsewhere.

That said, there is a degree of disappointment that, under his watch, Newcastle were unable to generate more funds through sales, an unavoidable necessity in a PSR landscape. In January, for example, Newcastle had to sell in order to buy the midfielder Howe sought as a priority but, despite conversations with Saudi Pro League clubs regarding Miguel Almiron, such a transfer did not materialise. Ashworth did manage to facilitate Allan Saint-Maximin’s £20million-plus ($33m) move to Al Ahli last summer, however, and recoup £15m from Nottingham Forest for Chris Wood.

Ashworth famously described himself as the “centre of the wheel”. What did that mean in practice? There are now nine football departments at Newcastle: men’s first team; women’s first team; player recruitment; loans; academy; medical and sports science; analysis; psychology and mental wellbeing; and football operations. Each of them represents a spoke, connected through the sporting director.

After a six-month audit following his arrival, getting the best people to run those departments was deemed vital, while beefing up the teams beneath them was also critical. Signing players is the bit that gets all the attention, but identifying the right staff is viewed as far more difficult. Supporting them and facilitating their work is regarded as an art form.

Ashworth’s big-picture job was to ensure everybody was working towards the same goal. After the drift of the Ashley era, Newcastle needed somebody to be their cultural architect, to establish a club-wide identity, to think about what their values are, and the way they want to play. Some of that had already been done by Howe, who arrived first, and Ashworth made sure it filtered through to everywhere else.

The idea here is that clubs become protected from lurch. If one manager goes, the next one will fit into a system, a way of doing things, with experts surrounding them, lessening the upheaval and a churn of staff. If the manager needs a player, the club turns first to its own academy, where the style mirrors the first team. If they have to look outside, then everyone is doing so from the same starting place, knowing exactly what they are searching for. All of it will be backed up by analysis.

Brighton, of course, is a great blueprint for this, albeit at a smaller club, in which players have been sold for huge profits, who have lost coaches to bigger teams and still found a way to thrive seamlessly in the Premier League, although Ashworth never fell back on his work on the south coast while at Newcastle.

“He never referenced what he did at Brighton or England,” someone with knowledge of the situation at Newcastle says, speaking anonymously in order to protect relationships. “It was always, ‘What’s best for Newcastle’. There were a lot of measurables, a lot of data and metrics. Everything was evidence-based. He was calm, organised, a good communicator. A facilitator. He was the ‘why’; he would ask, ‘What are you doing and why?’”

There is a misconception that a sporting director is by definition a transfer guru, but talent-spotting was not a key element within Ashworth’s job description.

Ashworth sat at the centre of nine football departments (Photo: Serena Taylor/Newcastle United via Getty Images)

That lies with the recruitment department, which is led by Steve Nickson, who became head of recruitment in 2017. He championed the purchase of Joelinton in 2019 under Ashley’s ownership, and post-takeover he pushed the case for Sven Botman and Alexander Isak, among others.

Nickson works in tandem with Andy Howe, who followed his uncle to Tyneside, having worked as head of UK first-team scouting at Bournemouth. Howe has been in the position since before the January 2022 window and has been an influential voice in transfer discussions throughout, including in the purchase of Anthony Gordon and Tonali. His recent title change, from head of first-team technical scouting to assistant head of first-team recruitment, was not a promotion per se; rather, it was viewed internally as a tweak to more accurately reflect Howe’s role and input.

Despite speculation that his new designation, which became public last week, was part of a post-Ashworth reshuffle, that is not the case. The alteration in job description was actually Ashworth-led, not head-coach-led, with Andy Howe respected by the ownership. His title had actually changed before the sporting director was placed on gardening leave, even if it was not confirmed until almost two weeks afterwards.

Both Nickson and Howe identify players and they then presented to Ashworth and Eddie Howe, who has the final say on all incomings. They enjoyed positive relationships with Ashworth, despite claims to the contrary.

That duo, alongside the head coach and UK-based members of the ownership team, oversaw recruitment and negotiations during January 2022 and the bulk of the summer 2022 window. It is their experience from that first post-takeover window — and especially their success, with Kieran Trippier, Bruno Guimaraes and Dan Burn among five signings — which is generating confidence inside the club that the blueprint for what feels like a pivotal summer for rebuilding will not be too adversely affected by Ashworth’s departure.

Scouts have continued to watch players first hand and routine recruitment meetings have taken place as normal, with plans largely impervious to whether or not Ashworth’s successor arrives before June.

Newcastle are no longer in survival mode, no longer in silos. There is more connection and communication between departments, more support and a far greater sense of working towards a common aim. Ashworth helped banish a lot of the invisible barriers that can rise in big organisations when people are only looking out for themselves or when there is no clear pathway forward.

Two years ago, Ghodoussi said: “We know our limitations. We are business people, but we’re smart business people. We know we have to build a solid team at Newcastle. That’s going to drive the business and the football.”

If there is regret that Ashworth is going so soon into what was sold to him as a multi-year project, there is no panic or urgency. As of last week, Newcastle had not spoken in depth to any potential candidate, with the main focus the expected overhaul this summer window. They know what they are doing, they say, and an appointment will follow, but there is no rush.

Strong links to the position feel, for now, premature.

Bournemouth’s Richard Hughes, who has worked with Eddie Howe previously, has been touted, but several sources have played that down and he is admired by Roma. Michael Edwards, formerly of Liverpool, whose approach Howe admires, and who he knows from their time as colleagues at Portsmouth in the early 2000s, has also been floated but appears unlikely. Monaco’s Paul Mitchell is another who has been suggested. Brentford’s director of football Phil Giles has previously been linked, and is a boyhood Newcastle fan but, again, no ideal candidate has yet been found.

There has been speculation, too, surrounding Nickson and whether he could be promoted or his position amended.

The head of recruitment is valued by the ownership and has had influence in regard to transfers, but he has no experience at sporting director level. Once more, such suggestions seem overhasty, given the selection process is set to be thorough and is yet to really begin.

Andy Howe, right, had his new title approved before Ashworth’s departure (Photo: Serena Taylor/Newcastle United via Getty Images)

In the meantime, Newcastle are carrying on as usual, albeit with no centre to their wheel. Ashworth did not have an official deputy or an assistant at Newcastle.

With no interim sporting director, it means that theoretically there is a power vacuum, although Darren Eales, the chief executive, has been seen more regularly at the training ground following Ashworth’s banishment. Good people have been empowered and that, for now, should be enough.

Staveley was already going to take an active involvement in Joelinton’s contract discussions — which have reached an impasse — just as she did with Guimaraes. She, Ghodoussi, Eddie Howe, Nickson and Andy Howe have been at the coalface with signings before, working well together, and can pick up the slack in the meantime, bolstered by the additional staff and support network Ashworth has put in place.

As Newcastle recognise, not all sporting directors are the same and now it is about crystallising what they want and need, before they determine who they want. Ashworth had a holistic approach, but others have specialisms, for example in recruitment, data, youth and performance. Every club has a different remit and a different definition of the position.

If Newcastle go down the recruitment route, say, then what happens to Ashworth’s structure? Or to Nickson? What happens to the spokes on Ashworth’s wheel? Is the setup robust enough to carry on without him, will it begin to fray at the edges or is it still so early that they need to rethink and start again?

These are all queries that are being pondered internally as Newcastle consider which direction to take.

There has been a downplaying of Ashworth’s overall importance in some quarters — Eddie Howe himself has even implied that the sporting director’s impact has been tempered by his short tenure — and that means an absolute like-for-like replacement is not inevitable. There is a chance that the position could even be redrawn and possibly split, with different figures overseeing different elements of the footballing operation, though all options remain under consideration.

Interestingly, Howe is keen to offer his perspective on what a post-Ashworth Newcastle should look like. Howe is not expected to be directly involved in the decision-making process — which many industry insiders believe is advisable, given the sporting director should hold greater ultimate authority — but he will express his opinion to the hierarchy. The head coach has largely governed post-takeover transfer policy and he is expected to seek similar sway in the future, while he may also advocate a push towards a more data-led approach to recruitment.

Until the past few weeks, Howe held a positive working relationship with Ashworth and did not view the sporting director as being overly intrusive on first-team matters. Howe has a power base at the club, which preceded Ashworth. It will be intriguing to see if that is altered, left intact, or even bolstered by any potential changes.

Howe, as with so many others at Newcastle, is waiting to see what the remodelled setup will look like and how it will affect them all.

Last season, Newcastle’s identity was pretty clear: aggressive, front-foot, not here to be popular but here to compete and with designs on winning things. This season, bedevilled by injuries and with Howe’s squad stretched, that identity is less obvious and, with Ashworth gone, it blurs even more. A sporting director is supposed to ensure continuity, even if everything else is in flux.

The people who will appoint Ashworth’s successor are asking themselves some fundamental questions again: who are we and what do we want to be?