Panic as Newcastle United director to leave – This £409m outlay should calm them down | OneFootball

I have found the panic amongst many Newcastle United fans very strange, following the announcement on Tuesday that the Newcastle United Sporting Director, Paul Mitchell, is going to leave the club.

Why the panic?

Why is this a disaster?

I have a strong feeling that those who are seeing the departure of Paul Mitchell as such a nightmare at this moment in time, are many of the same people who within a couple of months of him taking the job, were demanding that the Newcastle United Sporting Director be sacked!

After starting the job in July 2024, that summer transfer window with Paul Mitchell in charge of recruitment then saw only one more signing, one for the future Will Osula signing from Sheffield United for an initial £10m. Whilst we were subjected to week after week of the Marc Guehi saga, a saga that never came to a successful conclusion.

The Newcastle United Sporting Director then after the summer 2024 window ended, giving an informal interview to a dozen or more NUFC journalists that lasted the best part of a couple of hours. Only for pretty much all those post-interview headlines to be centred on a couple of journalists who made it all about one comment, which went along the lines of the Newcastle United recruitment ‘not being fit for purpose’, something which other journalists at the interview reported as having been more a general remark from Paul Mitchell about how the club had ended up in their desperate PSR emergency situation just before he took the job, not a criticism of the actual players who had been signed by Eddie Howe and others.

That made no sense anyway, as with the not excessive money that had been made available since Eddie Howe arrived, the level of signings had been spectacular value for money. In the dire relegation threat he inherited mid-season 2021/22, Howe had been forced to recruit experienced ready to go Premier League players in Burn, Wood, Trippier and Targett. Relegation would have been a disaster after we’d only just got rid of Mike Ashley. Following that initial emergency window, the following windows had seen all the big money spent on younger players, in the hope they would show further improvement on the pitch as they developed, as well as increasing in value as well. The signings of younger players from English AND overseas having proved an astonishing success in terms of value for the money spent, with the likes of Hall, Livramento, Isak, Gordon, Tonali and Botman. Players who have all improved markedly and massively increased in value.

What does Paul Mitchell actually do?

More accurately, what does a Sporting Director, sometimes called Director of Football, actually do?

I think that many (most?) Newcastle United fans and fans of clubs in general, want to believe that a Sporting Director is responsible for the signings that do and don’t arrive, end of story. That they get the credit and blame for the signings that a club is and isn’t making.

Is it really that black and white?

I think fans generally want to believe this, that there are clear lines on who deserves blame and credit. People aren’t so keen on grey, where it might be a bit more clouded and complicated on why signings are successfully made, plus just as importantly, when big signings aren’t got over the line. Then of course even more importantly, is how new signings perform once they are playing for you. As always, people are keen to blame or give credit to individuals when it is rarely clear cut.

I remember back in the day how Dan Ashworth was getting showered with praise for when the signings of players such as Botman and Isak were made, as well as loads of exciting young players arriving at the Academy, getting stolen away from other English clubs and arriving from clubs overseas, doing what rival clubs had done on an industrial scale for a long long time. Everybody excited that Yankua Minteh had been landed for £7m as a glittering prospect.

Less than a year later when Newcastle banked a £26m profit for a young winger who had never played a single game for NUFC and who they’d never even had to pay wages for the year he was ‘at’ the club (Feyenoord paying loan fee and his wages), it was suddenly a case of how Dan Ashworth hadn’t had anything to do with signing Yankuba Minteh, nor Botman, Isak or whoever. This was of course once Newcastle United fans discovered Ashworth was desperate to leave Newcastle for Man U, as opposed to…desperate to leave Brighton for Newcastle. One thing a disgrace apparently, whilst the move from the south coast was showing ambition!

So what was the truth on Dan Ashworth?

Ignoring the hero or villain thing when he has swapped clubs, the truth is that Dan Ashworth did of course deserves praise for the positive signings that were made during his time at St James’ Park, BUT not all the praise.

Ashworth was part of a combined effort by many people at the club in making the signings of Alexander Isak, Sven Botman and others, with of those working for NUFC, Eddie Howe and Chief Scout Steve Nickson almost certainly the two deserving most credit, in my opinion.

From everything I have read and heard, the role of Director of Football, of Sporting Director, if far more wide ranging than just recruitment.

I think it is impossible to tell exactly how good or bad a Sporting Director is, in an absolute way, as they are simply one of a team and only one of a number of senior figures within a club. This is especially so for those of us on the outside, how can any Newcastle United fans know for certain whether Dan Ashworth and/or Paul Mitchell have done a good job overall?

The very nature of their job is that they are behind the scenes, very different to Eddie Howe and his players, who like all managers and teams will be judged over a period of time on performances and results in matches.

My gut feeling is that overall, Dan Ashworth probably did a very decent job at Newcastle United.

You can all argue about what credit or not he can be given for the players signed when he was at St James’ Park but there are other things to consider.

A decade and a half of Mike Ashley had left the club a total joke, it was a shell of a Premier League club with a skeleton staff beyond the playing squad.

It was quite unique. Newcastle United didn’t just not have the kind of overall structure and set-up that the successful clubs had, those with power and money, NUFC were actually ran as more like a mediocre Championship club at best, behind the scenes. Lee Charnley as a kind of on-site caretaker with no senior leadership team at the club behind the scenes, whilst Mike Ashley had his Sports Direct characters in charge on his behalf from afar.

Dan Ashworth arrived with this unique task of helping to put in place so much that was missing. My understanding is that he was integral to getting proper structures and processes put in place, the club at last having a proper worldwide recruitment/scouting set-up, identifying potential first team players AND young talent for the Academy, then you had the not fit for purpose and long underfunded first team training ground facilities, the same at the Academy, Ashworth also integral with his experience at Brighton and elsewhere in establishing a proper women’s team set-up.

I think that, as I say, it was quite unique the scope of what Ashworth was needed to do, at the size of the club Newcastle United is, or should be.

I am not saying that only he could have done this, but for sure, Newcastle United needed a Dan Ashworth or similar, to help get NUFC running properly on the right lines.

When then it came time for him wanting to leave, then for me, it wasn’t nearly as important who came in as the new Sporting Director, Director of Football, at Newcastle United.

It is still important, just not nearly as important as a situation where a club needs completely rebuilding, as was the case post-Ashley.

Paul Mitchell came in with an important role to perform but it was at a club that was now running along proper professional lines, in the manner of an ambitious Premier League club.

It differs from club to club, the role of what exactly the scope of a Sporting Director is, but Paul Mitchell was expected to do normal kind of things, keep things running along proper lines (as Ashworth’s replacement at Brighton did), to be part of the club hierarchy and give input from his experience, to oversee things, to lead, to manage staff, to be part of a team to help produce results for the club overall, behind the scenes and also impacting on more public areas.

The £409m outlay

Returning to the hot topic of Newcastle United signings.

Whether they are made or not, whether the right ones come in, whether the right one leave, whether the right money comes in for them etc etc.

I think everybody is ignoring the absolute modern day reality of how things happen, or don’t happen.

A Sporting Director of any Premier League club, or indeed of any major club abroad, they are only playing their part in all of this.

Which brings me to this £409m outlay.

Here are the official FA amounts for agents fees for each club in this Premier League season – 2024/25:

All intermediary and agents’ fees paid by Premier League clubs over the past year (Summer 2024 and January 2025 transfer windows):

The reality is that for Premier League clubs, including Newcastle United, it is agents who are key to buying and selling players.

That is why they were paid £409m this past 2024/25 season.

Fifth highest spenders were Newcastle United, with a spend on agents fees of £24,366,737, compared to £18,881,923 the previous (2023/24) season.

Agents are key to buying and selling players, as well as extending contracts for existing players and so on.

You have to make your club look as attractive as possible to potential new signings, with what is happening on and off the pitch, then you have to be prepared to pay the necessary transfer fees and wages.

A Sporting Director plays an important part in helping to try and get deals done, bringing things together, but in reality, the efforts of Eddie Howe count for far more at Newcastle United, making United an attractive proposition in terms of ambition for players.

Clubs simply need to be able and ready to pay the money, then the agents will set up the deals.