"What has Ashworth achieved at Newcastle?
A decent amount, considering he has been there less than two years.
Essentially, his job has been to shape the overall footballing vision. While Eales heads the off-field area of the business, the sporting side is very much Ashworth’s domain and he has set about ensuring Newcastle have the means to deliver an “attacking, winning brand of football, to get supporters inspired and excited”.
The sporting director conducted a six-month audit of the club once he arrived then presented his findings to the board, having listened to Newcastle’s heads of department to find out what they believed needed to change before acting.
He established a host of new departments, viewing himself as the “centre of the wheel” containing nine spokes (more than in any of his previous roles at West Brom, the FA or Brighton): men’s first team, women’s first team, player recruitment, loans, academy, medical and sports science, analysis, psychology and mental wellbeing, and football operations.
There has been a modernisation of Newcastle from top to bottom, an upgrading of the academy, the integration of the women’s team into the club and then turning them into a professional outfit, a bolstering of previous skeleton-staff levels across the board, and the introduction of new departments and fresh senior roles, such as recruiting Dr Ian Mitchell, their first head of psychology, last October.
Ashworth, alongside Staveley and Ghodoussi, also oversaw a £10million upgrade of the training ground, while his expertise has been offered as the club search for a site to build a new state-of-the-art facility that could house the men’s and women’s teams, and the academy.
Qualification for the Champions League also came at the end of Ashworth’s first full season, less than 18 months after Newcastle were in the Premier League’s relegation zone. That, however, was primarily masterminded by head coach Howe extracting a dramatic improvement from his squad.
While Ashworth has also overseen expenditure of around £300million during his four transfer windows — including the impressive additions of Anthony Gordon, Harvey Barnes and Alexander Isak, the latter a club-record £60m signing, and the much-discussed deal to bring Sandro Tonali from AC Milan — Howe has been the most prominent voice in recruitment decisions, and not all of those acquisitions were led or concluded by the sporting director.
The academy and recruitment departments are prime examples of Ashworth’s impact. Both were previously funded and staffed at levels far below the Premier League average; they have swelled over the past two seasons, with the number of academy personnel growing by around 50 per cent and the budget increasing substantially. The scouting operation has been bolstered with additions including Paul Midgley, the head of youth recruitment, and Marcel Bout, a senior scout, plus the introduction of new roles such as position-specific analysts and the appointment of talent-spotters across the world, including in South America and eastern Europe."
