Dan Ashworth is sat in at executive box, high in the stands at St James’ Park with his laptop flipped open.
On the screen there’s a wheel, with Ashworth’s sporting director job title in the middle. Around the edge sit nine different departments – “A bit like the wedges of cheese in Trivial Pursuit” Ashworth quips – that he is overseeing, including player recruitment, the women’s team, loan players and wellbeing.
This is his way of explaining what he does day to day in a role that he says “most people think of as just recruiting players”. But at Newcastle, where he is back building, just as he did at England, West Brom and Brighton, his role is to sit in the middle of the wheel “keeping it spinning and making sure all of these spokes are aligned”.
A quick example: Ashworth was able to step in and stop the club from concentrating efforts on looking too intently at number 10s in the summer.
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“My job is to make sure I’m looking medium to long term for the club.”
Until last year’s takeover, Newcastle was never talked about in terms like this. A skeleton staff ran the place with the aim of staying in the Premier League and that was it. But since Ashworth arrived four months ago things have stepped up again. The club is coalescing around his strategy that has the aim of competing for European honours. New members of staff are arriving across departments every day and the place feels alive with possibility.
“I don’t think there is a ceiling for Newcastle,” Ashworth says when invited to place the club’s ambition.
“The only reason I pause is I know how good some of the other clubs are. If you look at Man City, Chelsea, Arsenal and how good their squads are, their infrastructure and what they’ve done over the years – they’re some clubs to catch.
“It’s a really difficult job to catch those but it’s possible. We’ve got a fantastic stadium, 52,000 who want to come and watch us every week but what we don’t have at the moment is attracting players for Champions League and European football.
“We don’t have the commercial revenues yet that Europe drives to be able to pay for those players to come to the club. There’s lots of steps that have to be put in place but the support network and size of the club, the potential of the club is huge.”
Ambition, though, does not mean realism is left at the door. Part of Ashworth’s job is to make the pieces fit into the Financial Fair Play (FFP) constraints which mean they have to look at “other routes” to build a world-class team. Heavy investment in the academy is one way but Ashworth admits “player trading” comes into it.
“At some stage, you have to trade. One of the things around Financial Fair Play is you have to trade, we have to be able to generate some money to reinvest and go again,” he says.
“Now, that might be players where the club has out-grown them, it might be players who are at a different stage of their career, but you never can quite control when a club or an opportunity comes knocking for a player that is maybe an aspiration they have always wanted to do.
“It might be a certain city in the world, it might be a club, it might be a country and so sometimes even though the attractiveness of this club has changed and I think we will be able to attract and hold on to our talent by having this journey and this improvement and hopefully be towards the top end of the league and competing for trophies.
“I can’t lie to you and say we’ll never have to sell a player, we’d always be able to hold on to our top talent, that doesn’t happen anywhere.”
Nervous fans will look at Bruno Guimaraes, attracting covetous glances from Real Madrid, and fret. Ashworth shoots back: “Absolutely do I not want to sell Bruno.
“He is a top player and a really important part of this journey. Again I go back to, we try to manage our talent properly, we try to give them the part of the journey, part of the vision, part building something and the connecting with the city and the supporters you’ve seen.”
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There is praise for Eddie Howe and confirmation that they align on what the club’s DNA should look like: attacking, enterprising football on the front foot. There are continual mentions of the importance of getting into Europe to attract better sponsors and players.
But, while the club will be “alive” to possibilities in January, there’s also an acknowledgement that the current level of spending must stop.
“What’s been clear, this club has invested – I wasn’t here for January, but circa £200m in 2022 – that’s unsustainable. You can’t keep doing that every year,” he says.
“You just can’t, so consequently we have to look at some emerging talent, enhancing our academy and getting the players through from a different route.”
Of course, there remain searching questions about the provenance of Saudi cash. Did Ashworth pause when asked to join a club with links to an autocratic regime criticised for its human rights record?
“From my point of view the fact that they passed the Premier League Owners’ and Directors’ Test, which I have to put my faith in, I’ve worked in football for twenty odd years. I have to put my faith in the fact the authorities do their due diligence and pass the rules and requirements and they’re stringent and there for a reason so consequently, no.”
Whether you agree with that or not, it seems certain that Newcastle will be at the centre of the Premier League conversation for a good while yet.
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