Latest news with #DanAshworth
New York Times
31-07-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Football Architects: The England DNA behind the pursuit of tournament-winning teams
This is the fifth of a six-part series looking at figures who have played a pivotal role in a modern football success story. The first piece, on the rebuilding of Ajax, can be found here. Part two, on Belgium becoming No 1 in the FIFA Rankings is here. Part three, on the rise of Croatian football is here. And part four on the sport's data pioneers is here. Each article comes with a related podcast, which can be found here on The Athletic FC Tactics Podcast feed. The rationale is simple, John McDermott says: 'Under pressure, players often revert to type.' He is explaining why, in December 2014, just six months after England had finished bottom of their World Cup group, Dan Ashworth and Gareth Southgate announced the 'England DNA' at St George's Park. Ashworth was the director of elite development at The FA and Southgate had just completed his first year as England Under-21s men's head coach. Advertisement The DNA was an overarching term for their 'approach to elite player development' that applied to England age-group teams from under-15s through to the men's under-21s and women's under-23s. It laid out the vision for future internationals to be exceptional across four 'corners' — technical/tactical, physical, psychological, social — and contained five core elements. Best practice for coaches was outlined, expectations for the 'future England player' were listed and the FA said holistic support would be provided. They articulated how age-group teams should play, which would be 'the strongest demonstration of the England DNA'. A focus was placed on a two-way understanding of heritage and culture in an increasingly diverse country. Over the next decade, England's senior men had their greatest spell of sustained success at tournament level, reaching successive European Championship finals in 2021 and 2024, and a World Cup semi-final in 2018. The senior women went even better, winning the Euros on home soil in the summer of 2022, finishing as runners-up at the 2023 World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, and then retaining their Euros title in Switzerland this summer. The notion of 'proper England' became a buzzword that powered them to the title. Success in age-group football has been abundant: the women's under-17s were Euros runners-up last May; the men's under-21s won the Euros again this summer, like they had in 2023; the men's under-17, under-19 and under-20 sides have all won continental or world silverware since 2017. The England DNA project was an important moment, comprehensively covering how to instil cultural change at the same time as catalysing technical and tactical evolution. 'Traditionally the Dutch, and more recently the Spanish, have very clear playing identities,' McDermott says. Advertisement He has been the technical director at the FA since early 2021 — having been Les Reed's assistant previously — and first worked there in 1995. McDermott coached the under-16 through to under-21 national teams in the mid-2000s, and worked in the academies of Leeds United, Watford, and Tottenham Hotspur. 'A player isn't going to change profile in a World Cup final into something which they aren't at their club,' he says. 'There's got to be a reflection (within England teams) of how they play at their clubs, in the Premier League, the Champions League.' The DNA was intended as the foundation of the FA's quest for tournament-winning teams. In 2014, though, England's senior men's side were on a run of eight major tournaments where their ceiling was the quarter-finals. The pressure kept compounding and players kept crumbling under it. So where did they look for inspiration? 'I would think we're all probably magpies,' McDermott says. 'If you were to speak to Pep Guardiola, you'd hear about the influence that Johan Cruyff had on him, the influence Rinus Michels had on Cruyff, and the influence that Vic Buckingham had on Michels. 'There's not this ivory tower where somebody comes up with this formula that nobody's ever thought of.' Consequently, Ashworth started close to home, visiting national training centres in France (Clairefontaine) and the Netherlands (Zeist). 'You speak to a lot of people. We're trying to get as many experiences as we can. You go to America, see what's happening in other sports, and ask: 'What do we do next? What's the evolution of the DNA?'. 'There's this curiosity where we're trying to look and then mould ideas into the English way, to make sure that's aligned with how the league is and where the playing system is.' 'I remember being at a FIFA conference and one of the speeches described how in senior football you're winning the next game or the next tournament, while in youth football it's about winning the next 10 years. I thought that was really clever, but there are subtleties.' Advertisement As such, they were not prescriptive with formations like Belgium (4-3-3), the Netherlands (4-3-3) and Italy (4-diamond-2) can be. 'It's less about the specific system and more about how it looks and how the players perform, playing the style that we want — expansive football, dominating the ball, playing through the thirds.' It is why the 'how we play' component of England DNA included transition as a phase of the game — counter-attacks and counter-pressing were given as much emphasis as build-up and defensive shape. 'The principles around in-possession, out-of-possession, transitions and set plays, I'm sure Alf Ramsey (England manager between 1963 and 1974) was talking about that. The examples and language changes. 'Have those principles been honed? Have they been better presented? Is the teaching better now with young players? Yeah, it probably is. 'One of the mantras we have is 'unearth, connect, develop and win'. Again Howard (Wilkinson) would have had that, and Dan (Ashworth) would have that in different words, but it's updating the wallpaper, updating the furniture.' It is an area where McDermott feels they have made progress but are still not perfect. He talks about 'footballing culture' and how players arrive at national team camps in the technical and tactical moulds of what their club coaches want. This was 'quite apparent' to McDermott when he started his current role. 'You'd see the Leeds players under Marcelo Bielsa, the Manchester City players under Pep Guardiola, some of the Liverpool players under Jurgen Klopp, and they'd want to do slightly different things — Leeds players going to man-to-man, Manchester City players wanting to stay on the ball, Liverpool players wanting heavy-metal football.' England DNA was therefore not just a blueprint but also something to unite players, who might spend so much of their season playing in different systems and styles to one another. He points out that, with age-group teams — whom the DNA was actually for — players can come from different levels of the English footballing pyramid. Increasingly, they are venturing into other major European leagues too. McDermott is talking via video call from Slovakia, where he was with England's men's under-21s at the European Championship. He was speaking mid-tournament as Lee Carsley's side defended their title from 2023 with an almost completely different squad, beating Germany 3-2 in the final compared with the one that was victorious over Spain two years prior. Advertisement Aidy Boothroyd once said that, if being the senior head coach was an 'impossible job' then being under-21s head coach was 'utterly impossible'. Trying to win tournaments and keep progressing talent to the senior side, he felt, were at odds with each other. For McDermott to say 'it's not win at all costs' feels almost ironic, considering the relative recent success of the under-21s and other age-group teams. 'There's a way in which we want to play and there's a way in which we want to get to those finals and win. It's finding that right balance between winning and developing — the two are very closely interlinked.' In 2008, England's men failed to qualify for the European Championship, and, the very next year, the under-21s were beaten 4-0 by Germany in the age-group final. Does the unreliability of memory mean that year is misremembered as the nadir from where change stemmed? 'There was not one day when it all happened. To say that this all began in 2008 disrespects some of the brilliant brains we've had in the past. It's definitely an evolution.' Success, as the saying goes, has many fathers. For McDermott, how you view the progression 'probably depends on who you speak to. I guess I'm steeped in FA history'. He namechecks Bobby Robson, who managed England's men's side for 95 games and took them to the semi-finals of the 1990 World Cup in Italy. Dave Sexton also gets credit from McDermott. He was twice England men's under-21s coach and led them to Euros wins in 1982 and 1984, back-to-back winners like Carsley's teams. McDermott traces things all the way back to Walter Winterbottom, England's first ever men's coach from 1946 to 1962. 'Followed by Allen Wade and then I worked under Charles Hughes. They all had their principles of play or how they saw the game being played,' McDermott says. Advertisement He is not sequentially listing England coaches, but figures who were inspirational in shaping — for better or worse — English footballing identity. Wade became the FA's director of coaching in 1963 and wrote The FA's Guide to Training and Coaching in 1970; Hughes was Wade's assistant — he'd later hold the role himself — and coached the Great Britain Olympic football team for a decade from 1964-1974. 'Charles was probably epitomised quite wrongly,' he says while squinting, as though digging into his subconscious to remember correctly. 'He wrote a book called The Winning Formula around direct play. He probably didn't sell his ideas as well (as he could).' Hughes is best known now for building on the work of Charles Reep, who was one of the earliest statistical analysts in English football. Reep collected data by hand in the 1950s. It must be remembered that this was innovative at the time, even if by modern standards the notational methods were simplistic and the findings over-reductive. Reep identified that most goals were scored from sequences of fewer than four passes, half of all goals were following opposition-half regains, and one in 10 shots were scored. The problem, as future research showed, was he did not adjust for frequency in a low-scoring sport. There were fewer goals from long passing sequences or deep build-ups because these happened less. Hughes, lauded by Robson in his autobiography, spun this into a concept he called the position of maximum opportunity (POMO); this stressed the importance of flooding the box with crosses and always having a player in line with the back post. Hence English football developed a reputation as direct and agricultural, perhaps cemented by the poor-quality, muddy pitches that it was often played on, which did little to facilitate intricate, short passing. Advertisement McDermott describes 1997 as 'a landmark,' with Howard Wilkinson, four months after being sacked as Leeds United manager, becoming technical director at the FA. He says it 'turbocharged' the development of English football. 'That was the start of the academies, starting to get full-time coaches. Before that we had centres of excellence. Howard was very much about the facilities and the time spent (coaching).' Wilkinson authored the Charter for Quality, a 90-page document of 32 aspects that outlined how the FA would maximise player potential, with specific demands on facilities and coaching, and proposing an action plan for small-sided games programme for players aged seven to 10. 'After Howard, there was Trevor Brooking. Trevor concentrated around improving techniques that built upon Howard's work. He brought in a document called The Future Game.' That technical guide, published in 2010, was three-times as big as the Charter for Quality, In it, Brooking outlines a vision of developing players who are technically excellent and innovative coaches who train them into existence. The backdrop of the time was England's age-group teams underachieving compared with European counterparts, with game-time for English players in the Premier League on the decline. McDermott explains that developing technicians was Brooking's 'passion,' owing to Brooking himself being physically lacking but two-footed and technical — he made over 500 appearances for West Ham between 1966 and 1984, twice won the FA Cup, and played 47 times for England. 'The EPPP (Elite Player Performance Plan) came in around that time (2012) within the academies. It turbo-boosted the initial work that Howard did — more investment came into clubs.' Wilkinson, McDermott feels, built the foundations for Brooking to try and improve players from. From that, 'Dan (Ashworth) came in and brought the DNA we now work off. Maybe because I've been around a long time and I've known a lot of the players, I don't see milestones.' The crowning moment for the England DNA on the men's side was at Wembley in summer 2021, nearly seven years after it was announced. England were 2-1 up in extra time against Denmark. Nothing says pressure like being one goal ahead in the 116th minute of a European Championship semi-final on home soil. Advertisement They had been dropping deeper and deeper and restoring to defending the box — reverting to the England type of old. But then something clicked. Denmark had used their subs and had to chase the game with 10 men when an injury hit. Raheem Sterling picked up a loose ball after England cleared a Denmark corner, and the two and a half minutes that followed were everything Brooking once dreamt of. England did not score. They did not have a shot. They did not cross the ball. What they did do was stitch together 53 passes, the longest possession of the tournament. An exhausted Denmark were pulled left and right as England went up and down the pitch and from side to side. There were one-twos, triangles, even an audacious switch from centre-back Harry Maguire to marauding right-back Kieran Trippier. England captain Harry Kane said 'that was a great sign of what we're about, that shows the unselfishness of the team. We ended up keeping it for a good few minutes and killed Denmark off. It was our night tonight.' They ended up being penalty kicks away from becoming a tournament-winning team, losing against Italy in the final. That England team, managed by Southgate (he stepped up to the senior team in 2016) manifested into the very blend of everything that he and Ashworth explained the DNA was in 2014. Parts of Southgate's team were stereotypically English, being so defensively strong and compact — they only conceded twice in seven games and neither were from open play — and yet they made a first tournament final for nearly 60 years by keeping possession. They were, to borrow McDermott's term, 'cosmopolitan'. England's player of the tournament, Sterling, was born in Kingston, Jamaica, and raised in Wembley. McDermott says that there are some age-group teams that can have a majority of players with multiple nationalities. Advertisement 'I don't remember really having competition on recruitment,' he says of the early 2000s. 'Competing for young talent (now) is probably more similar to competing for talent at a club than it was 20 years ago. 'The question also becomes an ethical one as they get a bit older. What I'm always aware of is giving somebody one or two caps, but they might have got 50 or 60 caps for another nation. Making good judgements in the interest of the player becomes a dimension.' But despite England's age-group success, McDermott still thinks of those who might have slipped through the net. One mention of Belgium's futures teams — which run parallel to their age-group sides and are for late-developing players — prompts him to bring up the relative age effect. That is the term to describe the overrepresentation of players born earlier in the year (academic year in England, calendar year elsewhere in Europe), because they tend to be the first to physically develop. 'It's always fascinated me. Quite early on, I didn't see the talent of Ashley Young when I was at Watford, we didn't offer Ashley a contract at under 16. Thankfully he stayed on. That was a near miss that I had very early in my career.' 'We are trying to get our coaches to be aware of that — it's something we do within all of our recruitment meetings. I don't want our coaches to be frightened of playing a younger player or a physically immature player just in case we lose.' He cites stats from the under-19 Euros where just 17 per cent of players were fourth-quartile babies (i.e. the youngest in their year groups). 'That includes a lot of countries that have been looking at futures projects for some time,' McDermott points out. 'It probably balances off a little bit as you get older and sometimes those August birthdays are probably more resilient because of it, because they've survived. We had quite a few when I was at Spurs: Kane, (Ryan) Mason, (Andros) Townsend were all late in the year. 'If I had a magic wand that'd be one thing I would probably look to address, especially in this country but across world football as well — it's everywhere.'
Yahoo
24-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Dan Ashworth leading search for new FA women's technical director
Dan Ashworth is leading a panel that includes Lionesses manager Sarina Wiegman, as the Football Association (FA) search for their next women's technical director. Kay Cossington left her role as the FA's women's technical director last month. Cossington had led the FA's women's technical team since 2016 but departed to become head of women's football at the investment firm Sixth Street and chief executive of Bay Collective, a multi-club organisation launched by the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) side Bay FC. The search for a replacement is underway, with Ashworth — who returned to the FA as chief football officer in May — leading the process to hire a new candidate. Ashworth was previously the FA's director of elite development, and has returned to the organisation following stints at Brighton, Newcastle and Manchester United, where he lasted just five months as sporting director. The FA's chief executive, Mark Bullingham, explained on Friday that England manager Wiegman is also a member of the panel that will decide on Cossington's successor. 'Sarina is on the interview panel for that role,' Bullingham said. 'It is important that the chemistry is really good between those roles and those individuals. Sarina and Kay have a good relationship and we want to replicate that. 'Dan Ashworth is now leading that search. We had already got it down to a longlist and he is now refining it down to a shortlist. We would like to make an appointment, but it's more important for us to make the right appointment, so we won't rush it through. It will probably still take a little bit of time.' Wiegman's contract runs until after the 2027 World Cup, as does those of her coaching staff, but trusted assistant manager Arjan Veurink will depart after Euro 2025 to become Netherlands head coach. 'She is the most successful coach in women's international football today with two Euros wins and two World Cup runners-up medals,' Bullingham said of Wiegman. 'It's worth pointing out that no other coach in the men's or women's game has won a Euros or World Cup with two different nations, so she has a unique achievement in that.' Asked whether Wiegman would consider staying beyond 2027, Bullingham replied: 'We haven't looked beyond that timescale yet or engaged in those conversations.' He was similarly unwilling to discuss the possibility of Wiegman's contract being terminated early if, for example, the Lionesses produced a Euro 2025 campaign the FA deemed to have fallen below standards. 'We're delighted that Sarina's in place until 2027 and I don't see any scenario changing that,' Bullingham said. 'We did get a small compensation fee [from the Dutch FA for Veurink's exit], but that was not a big factor in the decision. It was relatively small. I won't go into too many more details. 'It wasn't really about that, it was more about allowing someone who had been a really good operator for us, to achieve a dream that they wanted to do. 'We've agreed the [performance-related] bonuses with the players. We locked that down a few weeks ago. The way that works is that it is a percentage of the prize money we get from UEFA. But that has all been agreed.'
Daily Mirror
06-07-2025
- Business
- Daily Mirror
Ashworth's four-man Man Utd shortlist that saw three signed with mixed results
Dan Ashworth was appointed Manchester United's sporting director last summer and had drawn up a list of four key players he wanted to sign for then-manager Erik ten Hag Dan Ashworth's tenure as Manchester United 's sporting director was a short-lived one, ending in disaster within just a few months. Ashworth was a prime target for Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who had to patiently wait over four months for him to officially commence his role due to being placed on gardening leave by his previous club, Newcastle United. It was on the 1st of July last year that Ashworth formally joined the Red Devils and immediately embarked on an ambitious recruitment campaign for then-manager Erik ten Hag, following United's FA Cup final victory over Manchester City. As per the Daily Mail, Ashworth had his sights set on four specific players, managing to secure three of them last summer – with the exception of Everton's Jarrad Branthwaite. A £35million offer for him was turned down by the Toffees a year ago, leading them to explore other alternatives, reports the Manchester Evening News. One of those other players was well-acquainted with Ten Hag, who was eager to reunite with. United shelled out £42m to bring former Ajax ace Matthijs De Ligt in from Bayern Munich. In a bid to provide Rasmus Hojlund with some assistance at the opposite end of the pitch, Ashworth activated Joshua Zirkzee's £34m buyout clause from Bologna after the Dutchman had aided the club in securing Champions League football for the first time in nearly six decades. Eager to bolster their defensive midfield – with Casemiro failing to replicate his Real Madrid form at the time – United sanctioned a move for Manuel Ugarte, who Paris Saint-Germain were willing to offload after just one season. A £40m offer was enough to secure the former Sporting CP star's services, eventually reuniting him with Ruben Amorim following the Portuguese boss' appointment as Ten Hag's successor last November. However, Ashworth departed United in December, before he could witness the outcome of his efforts. Over four months of the season had already elapsed upon Ashworth's exit and the performances of those three players left much to be desired. Despite De Ligt earning a formidable reputation in Europe since his teen years, he initially struggled to find his footing in Manchester's defence. While United endured a lacklustre season under Amorim, the Dutchman gradually found his rhythm in defence, sparking hopes among United fans that he will remain a key figure in their backline for years to come. The same optimism doesn't extend to Zirkzee, whose underwhelming presence has led United to continue their search for a striker to address their goalscoring issues – a role the former Bayern Munich forward was expected to fulfil. The 24-year-old has only managed to net seven goals in 49 matches across all competitions, with a mere three coming from Premier League games. His future at the club could be up in the air if Amorim succeeds in attracting ex-Sporting striker Viktor Gyokeres, despite Arsenal showing strong interest. Aston Villa's Ollie Watkins is also on United's current watchlist. As for Ugarte, the 24-year-old excels in tackling and regaining possession, typical traits of a defensive midfielder. However, he faced criticism last season due to his lack of forward play, with supporters arguing that his passing skills and athleticism are severely lacking. Amorim faces a colossal task ahead of the 2025/26 season, and it's yet to be seen what role these three players will have in United's future. And it seems unlikely that Ashworth's full quartet will be completed anytime soon. Branthwaite has recently signed a new contract with Everton under ex-United manager David Moyes. The England international, now reportedly valued at around £70m, inked a new five-year deal earlier this week.
The Guardian
02-06-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Paul Mitchell's Newcastle exit leaves Eddie Howe in position of maximum strength
The table was all wrong. In retrospect it offered the first clue that lack of emotional intelligence would prove central to Paul Mitchell's undoing at Newcastle. It was early last September when reporters were invited to St James' Park to meet the club's then newish sporting director. As Mitchell strode into the windowless Sir Bobby Robson suite and took his seat at the head of a very long rectangular table he neglected to notice that journalists at the opposite end were isolated from the conversation. Sure enough, he was questioned so intensely by those clustered around him that others struggled to get a word in edgeways. While it took me more than an hour of a 90-minute briefing to seize a fleeting opportunity to ask a question, an adjacently seated colleague never managed to say a single word to Dan Ashworth's successor. Mitchell appeared oblivious. Supporters might think: 'So what?' But it appeared indicative of a wider carelessness that helps to explain why the sporting director will be leaving Newcastle by 'mutual consent' this month. The previous year Ashworth had conducted a similar exercise at the training ground. On walking into the media room the then soon-to-be Manchester United‑bound sporting director surveyed rows of formal seating, shook his head and began dragging chairs into a more inclusive circle. That way everyone felt equal and could easily participate. It was a common‑sense move that won hearts and minds. Emotional intelligence is an unquantifiable yet imperative component in football's high-stakes world of fragile egos and, sometimes, almost paranoid insecurity. Mitchell shortage of soft skills provoked a needless civil, and turf, war with Eddie Howe last autumn. If failing to recognise the need for circular seating represented a mistake, his repeated reiteration that Newcastle's ostensibly successful transfer policy was 'not fit for purpose' proved incendiary. Given the manager demands a final say on signings and his nephew, Andy Howe, is a key figure in the recruitment department, it seemed arrogant macho posturing. Sadly this humility bypass would obscure the considerable good Mitchell has done on Tyneside, most notably appointing the injury-prevention specialist James Bunce. It might have been different had Amanda Staveley and her husband, Mehrdad Ghodoussi, still been around as directors and minority owners to smooth the sporting director's rough edges. Staveley is all about deal-making facilitated by emollient human connectivity. During the two and a half years she and Ghodoussi ran Newcastle on behalf of the majority owner, Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, a sense of harmony prevailed. Yet since the couple were forced out last summer – apparently for assorted reasons, including a confusing overlap with the role of the chief executive, Darren Eales – the club has seemed colder and more corporate. Stress levels have risen. It did not help that Ashworth – admired by Howe for his humility and 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' approach that, paradoxically, would preface his swift Old Trafford downfall – had been persuaded the Mancunian grass was greener. Or that Eales, who had been diagnosed with blood cancer, announced he would depart once a successor was identified. Sign up to Football Daily Kick off your evenings with the Guardian's take on the world of football after newsletter promotion With that moment drawing close, the chief executive and Mitchell, old friends from their Tottenham days, leave at a juncture when Howe operates from a position of maximum strength. After winning the Carabao Cup and securing a second Champions League qualification in three years, his fiercely protected power base looks bombproof. The manager's undeniable, if occasionally high‑maintenance, brilliance camouflages considerable behind‑the‑scenes turmoil at a club where the boardroom churn is hardly conducive to stability. While the available funds of about £100m need to be spent urgently yet intelligently on restocking Howe's slender squad, Newcastle's second‑tier women's team have just released 12 players and confront a complicated crossroads. PIF could do worse than replace Mitchell internally. The former Sunderland and Hibernian manager Jack Ross holds an MA in economics, has written two children's books and is head of Newcastle's strategic technical football partnerships. The former executive with the Scottish players' union and the global FifPro is smart, nuanced and empathetic; he champions women's football and, unlike his bosses, is an excellent communicator. Counterproductively, communication between the media and the Saudis is nonexistent. Yasir al‑Rumayyan, Newcastle's chair, has never spoken to reporters, let alone explained the ownership strategy or why potential moves to a new stadium and/or training ground remain pending. That might seem irrelevant to fans. Yet if, as is widely believed, purchasing the club was really all part of a sportswashing exercise intended to clean up the kingdom's blood-stained image while bolstering its embryonic tourism industry, it is also distinctly odd. Perhaps there is an acceptance that Saudi Arabia's human rights record is so atrocious that awkward questions are best avoided, but maybe it's simply a lack of empathy. Whatever the reason, the disconnect jars. The lack of trust between Mitchell and Howe ultimately spelled divorce. When eventually I asked the former whether the manager's instinctive wariness of outsiders meant winning his confidence was hard work, the reply – 'You sound like you know him better than I do' – sounded only half-joking. After that calamitous briefing the manager blanked the sporting director for a fortnight before Eales negotiated a truce that endured to the point where the announcement last Tuesday of Mitchell's impending exit prompted mild surprise. After all this, maybe the Saudis regret allowing the emotional intelligence embodied by Ashworth, now a senior Football Association executive, and Staveley to slip through their fingers.
New York Times
29-05-2025
- Business
- New York Times
Eddie Howe isn't celebrating Paul Mitchell's exit. Uncertainty is a team-killer
'My job is to get us in five years' time to our ambition,' Paul Mitchell said, not long after his appointment as Newcastle United's sporting director. 'We have to be smarter, more intelligent.' By the time he leaves his post, at the end of June, Mitchell will have lasted barely one of those years. In June 2022, when Dan Ashworth began work as Newcastle's sporting director after four months of gardening leave at Brighton & Hove Albion, he spoke about 'helping the club to grow and achieve long-term success'. Twenty months later, he was again tending his beautiful roses and waiting to join Manchester United. Advertisement For Newcastle and sporting directors, long-term is very much the wrong term. Mitchell's role was '90 per cent recruitment', according to Darren Eales, the chief executive, which by the very blunt metric of actually buying first-team players, makes his tenure 100 per cent unsuccessful, so far at least — Mitchell has another month to shift that dial and the club are pushing to get transfers done. Ashworth, said Mehrdad Ghodoussi — who, along with Amanda Staveley, his wife, initially ran Newcastle post-takeover and were minority owners — would be a 'key hire, the person that 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.' To continue that analogy, Ashworth left with the roof not yet fitted and the cement still wet. There is another theme here, too. Over the space of 16 months, Mitchell, Ashworth, Ghodoussi and Staveley will all have departed and so, too, will Eales, who arrived on Tyneside two months after Ashworth and who announced last September that he had been diagnosed with a chronic form of blood cancer. They are all pivotal figures, responsible for running the club, buying players, setting budgets or setting the tone and much else besides. On the pitch, Eddie Howe's team was a model of excellence and stability for the second-half of the season just ended, winning the club's first domestic trophy for 70 years and qualifying for the Champions League. Above him in the boardroom, it has been constant churn. Does this churn matter? Given the Carabao Cup win, a pair of Wembley finals over two years, playing in Europe's leading club competition for two seasons out of three, and successive league finishes of fourth, seventh and fifth, arguably not at all. Who cares what the suits are doing when Howe has discovered alchemy? Advertisement Yet this — categorically — would not be a theory Howe himself subscribes to and those who have portrayed Mitchell's rapid exit as some kind of victory have called it wrong. There was no celebrating. What Howe wants is new players as quickly as possible and his immediate concern was about the knock-on effects of losing the man whose role was supposed to be '90 per cent recruitment'. Howe said as much on Sunday after Newcastle's place in the Champions League next season was cemented. 'Speed is key for us and I've reiterated that many times internally because we have to be dynamic,' he said. 'We have to be ready to complete things very, very quickly because good players don't hang around for long.' Newcastle have not signed a first-team-ready player for three consecutive transfer windows. Last summer, they sold Elliot Anderson, who had been earmarked for a significant role, to Nottingham Forest to help balance the books. They also sold Yankuba Minteh, who his since made 32 Premier League appearances for Brighton as a right-winger, a position Howe has wanted to reinforce for years. In January, they trimmed more fat they didn't really have, selling Miguel Almiron back to Atlanta United and allowing Lloyd Kelly to join Juventus, initially on loan but with an obligation to buy. In financial terms, those deals were necessary and represented decent business, but in football terms, which is what Howe cares about, it left his squad desperately shallow. After all that, they now have headroom under the Premier League's profit and sustainability rules (PSR). They have scope for manoeuvre — and a good thing too, because the squad needs a significant refresh. Howe wants a goalkeeper, a right-winger, a centre-half and potentially a forward. Targets have been deliberated over and fixed upon. Advertisement What he doesn't need is confusion or delay. In his leaving statement, Mitchell said 'the club is in a fantastic position to continue building', but the architect left with Ashworth's defection and now the contractors and engineers are going too. When it comes to the bigger-picture stuff, Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), Newcastle's majority owners, are notoriously slow to move, and an interim structure needs to be capable of swift decisions. The club say it will be, but judgement can only be deferred. Mitchell's departure, in tandem with Eales — and at least partially caused by it, given their long-standing relationship — means a second consecutive summer of upheaval for Newcastle and Howe who, at this stage, has no inkling of who he will be reporting to next season and who his immediate boss will be. This feels sub-optimal. Football and football people crave certainty. Players want to know precisely what their roles are and to look around their dressing-room knowing team-mates feel the same. Managers want to know what to expect from their players and feel confident that tactical instructions will be carried out. From above, they want authority and backing. Uncertainty is a team-killer. When Staveley and Ghodoussi left Newcastle last July, Howe lost two huge allies and advocates. The three of them had worked closely together in the early days post-takeover, forging a tight, intimate relationship and he was kept informed of everything, good or bad. They left a vacuum. Newcastle felt like less of a family and more corporate. When Mitchell arrived, Howe was given scant notice. If that was bruising, then Mitchell's forthright, brusque personality and desire to make his own mark at Newcastle did not help the healing process. 'It was the wrong attitude to come in with,' an associate of Howe said, speaking on condition of anonymity. 'If the club was really at a low point then you could understand that idea of changing everything. It didn't need that. It just needed a bit of support.' After the PSR shambles, when Newcastle held negotiations with Liverpool over selling Anthony Gordon, Chelsea enquired about Alexander Isak, and after Mitchell led a long, fruitless pursuit of Crystal Palace's Marc Guehi, Newcastle's dressing-room was rife with uncertainty. Every player knew they had a price. With no quality additions, they were less convinced about Newcastle's ambitions. Howe felt less certain in his relationships. He was less clear about what the club's vision was, so how could he persuade his players? In a sport of marginal gains, Newcastle began the season a few percentage points off. They were inconsistent, either nabbing results while not playing well or playing better but proving incapable of seeing games out. With no reinforcements and little support network, it was left to Howe and his backroom team to shake players out of it. It meant months of introspection and effort. Advertisement 'No one fully understands apart from Eddie and his staff just how difficult this season has been,' the associate said. 'Things could have gone very differently.' This was the byproduct of uncertainty. In the meantime, Howe and Mitchell muddled along. They were not stags butting heads. The early tension had first been around personality and then transfers and with Newcastle unable or unwilling to buy anybody, transfers were largely irrelevant. They were never going to be close mates, but Howe put his head down and got on with it. Perhaps that tension would have flared up again this summer. Perhaps Mitchell's expertise and experience would have come to the fore and everyone would have been delighted. Perhaps his legacy will turn out to be the 'fantastic position', he spoke about and Newcastle will get their deals done, which is the minimum Howe deserves after a truly transformational season. Howe has delivered an elite performance. Newcastle's team operated at an elite level for six months, showing what they are capable of. Their marketing and commercial departments are getting there after long years of shrivelled ambition, but in terms of infrastructure and facilities they are not yet an elite club. 'That's what we want to be,' Howe said when The Athletic put these points to him last weekend. 'That's what we're desperate to continue to be. But if I answer that with a definitive yes, I'm not sure it would be wise. I'll let you judge. But we crave that, we want that. Now my summer will be focused purely on trying to make us stronger and better for every challenge we're going to face.' But now he will also have to focus on forging new partnerships, with Eales' replacement and Mitchell's, whatever their job descriptions are and whatever the new structure is. Once again, there will be different people who are tasked with running Newcastle or who are instrumental in shaping what Newcastle should be, either as a squad or as a club. To a certain extent, Howe knew what he would be getting with Mitchell: a headache. Now he doesn't know again. In part, this is to do with circumstances. In an ideal world, a CEO would appoint the sporting director who would seek out the best fit as manager, but at Newcastle they did it the other way around. Equally, nobody could have predicted Eales' illness and, after this extraordinary and rewarding season, he must now belatedly take care of himself and his family. Advertisement To return to the start, there will be no winner from Mitchell's departure if, come August, Howe looks around his dressing room and again sees uncertainty flicker in his players' eyes. And to borrow again from Ghodoussi's analogy, if building a club is really like building a house, do Newcastle yet have the 'right foundations'? Or are they once more being knocked down in order to start over? One thing is certain: their master craftsman cannot be expected to keep picking up the pieces.
