Deep in the bowels of St James’ Park on Wednesday afternoon, Newcastle United started the process of turning the page on a frustrating transfer window.
Two months on from his appointment sporting director Paul Mitchell spoke for the first time to journalists, fronting up for what happened in the summer while trying to clear some of the fog of confusion around Newcastle’s future direction.
It was a fascinating State of the Nation address. Here’s what we learned.
Mitchell admits his appointment disrupted things – but this wasn’t his strategy
Mitchell spoke for almost an hour and a half in Newcastle’s boardroom with no questions off the agenda and a clear theme through it all was that, for this window at least, Mitchell was carrying out a strategy that pre-dated him.
His appointment in the middle of summer was hugely significant but, for the last seven weeks at least, Mitchell suggested he was facilitating rather than driving recruitment matters.
“I don’t think there was disruption (to Newcastle) because it was a pre-designed strategy,” he said.
“Ultimately would I have been more comfortable going into the summer having been here a period of time to plan? 100 per cent.
“But disruption? No, because my job was just to support so I didn’t actually disturb, rightly or wrongly, our direction of travel.
“I didn’t have as much influence as I’ve had in 18 years of transfer trading. My job was to support and I took that responsibility very seriously. You’re just part of the agreed sign-off on the strategy.”
A new strategy is being put together to join the “super clubs” – with a scouting overhaul at the centre
There was a lot of talk at the end of last season about Newcastle United’s “phase two” – a movement from the first flushes of the takeover and the club moving from a position of surviving to thriving.
Most, including some inside Newcastle, thought this would involve a big turnover of players and adding one or two “elite” signings but it’s clear now that the new era will be more about “outwitting” PSR by using their resources to improve recruitment and become “best in class” in data scouting and global talent ID.
Mitchell was bracingly clear on one thing: the strategy he inherited has to be ripped up and a new path forged. That was not because the old one wasn’t successful, it just is no longer “fit for purpose” against the backdrop of PSR rules that have been rigorously enforced.
He said continuously signing ready-made players for big money was impossible.
“Other clubs that have maybe adopted a different approach over time, with more intelligence, (who are) maybe more data-informed than what we are, actually prospered in this window, didn’t they? And I think that’s where we have to grow to be now,” he said.
“It’s kind of the next phase of the growth of this project. We have to become better in this area of expertise, and there’s a skill.”
In that belief he holds common ground with club chairman Yasir Al-Rumayyan. A meeting in the boardroom on Sunday left him with “grey hairs” at the scale of PIF’s ambition but also encouraged that he has the freedom to begin working on a new strategy to reach the Premier League’s summit.
“He’s still super ambitious, but also he’s super strategic as well,” Mitchell said of the PIF governor.
“I think we’ve all come to the same conclusion over the last few days, which is that we’re going to have to map this differently.
“We’re going to have to approach this differently to the last two-and-a-half years because that can’t work now. We have these restrictions.
“Is it going to affect where we get to? No. Is it going to affect the speed? 100 per cent.
“I’m a big strategist, so I like strategy and plotting to outwit your opponents. That’s why I’m not sure where I stand on it.
“But, for us, would we love in one year or two years to get to where some of the superclubs are? We would. But that’s not the reality.”
These are bold words from Mitchell. He is now one of the most important men at Newcastle United and will be held to account for what comes next.
“I’ll know whether we’ve done a good job in five years’ time,” he said.
“I know that’s not what people like to hear and that requires patience. But that’s the reality. Change cycles take that kind of length of time, three years minimum probably, five years maximum.”
His hour-long chats with Eddie Howe and a manager they want ‘for the long term’
Eddie Howe’s comments in Germany – where he almost seemed to make the relationship probationary – set alarm bells ringing at Newcastle. But Mitchell spoke in glowing terms about their embryonic relationship.
“We’ve had some good conversations, we both have that frustrated ex-footballer who never had a career in us too,” he joked.
He rowed back against the idea Howe wasn’t in the loop on transfers, saying there was constant WhatsApp communication on the recruitment state of play and “hour-long” chats every day, right up until the final minutes of the transfer window. Further proof: Howe has had three days off this week but the pair have continued to communicate.
The club are committed to Howe for the long-term, he said. “He’s super impressive on the grass – and I have worked with some good ones to put that in context,” Mitchell said.
The England job remains open – in theory at least – and Howe remains one of the favourites for that role. What would Mitchell do if they made the call?
“We want Eddie Howe as our head coach for as long as we can,” he said.
“But we also recognise we are on a journey, and we also recognise his quality and his potential as well. Once again, I’ve never been a guy scared of interest in any of our staff members, especially our head coach, and especially from a level of organization that the FA is.
“As an Englishman, I am proud. And I think it’s a recognition of the two-and-a-half years he’s had here and the job he did at Bournemouth. It’s a really good practicioner being recognised for what he’s done.”
Yasir Al-Rumayyan’s visit reinforced ambition
PIF’s commitment to the Newcastle project has been questioned but Mitchell says he got no sense of that in Sunday’s meeting. PSR challenges aren’t going to encourage the Saudi majority owners to walk away, he claimed.
If the body language of him, CEO Darren Eales and Al-Rumayyan looked awkward on Sunday, the meeting in the boardroom before the game was anything but. Newcastle’s ambition to be “number one” continues.
“Deep down, don’t we all want to be number one at some point?” Mitchell said.
“I don’t think there’s a bigger target. Having that as an ambition is not a bad thing because it drives us every day to be better. We need to work towards being number one.
“Does he want us to be number one? Yes. Should we be scared of ambition? No. Should we thrive and challenge ourselves to get there?
“It’s not just number one on a podium in the Premier League or the Champions League. It’s number one in every department. That’s what I’ve learnt and what we probably haven’t expressed well enough.
“We want to be best in class in everything we do and that’s a great challenge. Is it one of those things where we need to be number one and if we don’t get there tomorrow (they’ll leave)? No. He’s smarter than that. This is a longer-term investment than being number one tomorrow.
“This is best in class, being number one in everything we do, and those drivers will get us there.”
Mitchell hopes they’ve eradicated the Newcastle tax
For a long time insiders at St James’ Park have bristled at the premium selling clubs put on players Newcastle want. The “richest club in the world” tag has been hugely unhelpful in negotiations and a millstone around Newcastle’s necks. Some of the valuations quoted have baffled Newcastle.
Their stance on Guehi was, Mitchell says, intended to send a message to the market.
“The (Newcastle tax) was a real thing,” he said.
“It’s about setting precedents to the market that we will pay fair value for the right profile [of player] for sure.
“It shouldn’t be misconceived of a lack of ambition, I just think that’s the model you have to work in the modern game now.
“It should not be lobbied against ambition because if we just spend, spend, spend, spend once again, we become accountable to that by penalties, fines and points deductions and that isn’t good leadership, that isn’t being a good custodian of the club, that isn’t taking your role responsibly, you’re being negligent.
“That is only for one thing, it’s for your ego. We’re not going to do that.”
The Guehi saga really wasn’t that much of a saga
It can now be revealed that Newcastle’s final bid for Guehi was a fortnight before the deadline, although dialogue continued into the last few days of the transfer window. With Palace refusing to budge on a valuation Newcastle felt too high, they did “pivot” to other targets.
But Mitchell admits, on reflection, the club’s focus was probably too narrow. He didn’t row back too much on the idea that Newcastle have looked too much at the Premier League market in the recent past.
“If you look at, let’s say the super clubs and their recruitment and infrastructure, they don’t just look at one market only,” he said.
“They are more diverse, have a wider-range scouting network so I think Eddie is smart enough to understand that to go to the next level then you do have to diversify and outstretch your network otherwise you just stay local in your entirety and our ambition is much bigger than that.”
They will look to find “value” abroad, he said: “We have signed players from abroad, we have done that, but should we stretch now our recruitment radius and start to look at other pockets where there are undervalued talent, where if you look at my career I’ve managed to do that quite successfully, should we find a balance in the approaches – then I think we should.”
The injury stat that prompted Newcastle’s big change
Mitchell revealed that for long spells last season Newcastle had 55 per cent of their available squad out injured, a huge reason why the club appointed James Bunce to a head of performance role.
Howe has been “super receptive” to him and there is a recognition that injuries were a big issue at Newcastle last season, Mitchell said. Solve that and the negativity around the transfer window will subside.
“If we can once again keep the players fit, keep the players focused, keep the players resilient, we have got a really good team,” he said.
“We won’t need to rotate as much as others, because we’re not in that really difficult [fixture] cycle to manage.”
A new sales strategy is coming – and about time too
Mitchell was clear that Newcastle’s transfer strategy has been hampered by a lack of sales.
But there was an important caveat: they don’t necessarily need to sell the crown jewels to prosper. Instead they need to get better at “mid-range” sales, citing Liverpool’s approach to sales this summer as a possible model to copy.
“You say (selling) a big one, but you look at what Liverpool did, I don’t think they lost a big one, but they did do a Fabio Carvalho at £25m and they did do (Sepp van den Berg) at £25m. That’s still £50m and then you can fund a big one yourself,” he said.
“So there has to be a more balanced approach, there has to be a more balanced model and there definitely has to be a more strategic approach here that we haven’t had the last two and a half years.”
Newcastle’s PSR hole “scared the life” out of the club
First the good news: there are no nasty PSR surprises coming down the track in June 2025.
But here’s the less cheery bulletin: what happened in June, when Newcastle sold Yankuba Minteh and Elliot Anderson, will inform the club’s approach moving forward. It is why they are having to “pivot” their strategy.
“I think the job that was done (in June) was admirable,” Mitchell said.
“My feeling, coming in in mid-July, was that there was definitely a real clarity of, ‘We don’t want to live through that again’.
“We got away it by the skin of our teeth, and we have to make sure that we don’t end up back there any time soon because we just survived.
“That’s why we are really analysing strategy, making sure we’re fit for purpose, global reach, player profiling – all of these things will come together to help us avoid a similar situation in the future.
“As I sit here today, I can say that there’s nothing that should be coming that should mean we find ourselves in a similar position.”
This is welcome communication – and Mitchell will do more of it
Newcastle sent a message by sending Mitchell out: they aren’t the club of the Mike Ashley era who retreated to their bunkers in times of criticism.
i understands Mitchell intends to do more interviews and the club’s communication will come from multiple voices. CEO Eales has spoken already this summer and Mitchell is open to more set piece interviews.
That should build trust and they deserve credit for it. Ultimately they will be judged on what they deliver – but this is a positive first sign.
from Football - inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/D8bnWz2
Post a Comment