Newcastle United’s takeover in October has led to a restructure, including changing manager and looking to step up business off the field.
There were no secrets made that PIF wanted a sporting director, with the hunt still on-going. They have had a long standing interest in Dan Ashworth from Brighton.
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He has left Brighton, but is on gardening leave so that creates complications for Newcastle who are desperate for a sporting director to come in sooner rather than later after hiring Nick Hammond for the January transfer window to help them in dealings.
Duncan Castles looked at the current state of affairs on Ashworth to the Toon on The Transfer Window podcast:
“I understand it would be less than a million pounds. As we reported, when that offer came in, Newcastle have more than doubled his salary, it doesn’t seem like much of an extra investment. I guess the question would be whether Tony Bloom, as owner of Brighton, could hold Ashworth to his contract should Newcastle decide to buy it out at full value whether legally he’s allowed to do that, or whether if the full value of the contract is offered to him, he has to allow Ashworth to leave.”
TIF thoughts on Ashworth…
There’s no doubting that a role at Newcastle United is incredibly exciting at the moment. We’ve already seen the club spend big in January with players such as Bruno Guimaraes joining the Magpies.
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While he’s clearly done a good job at Brighton, there’s no doubting a role with a club looking to make huge steps forward and challenge for Europe is a project anyone would be excited by.
Thankfully for the Magpies, the compensation package sounds like it won’t be too much in the grand scheme of things given the spending power Newcastle now have.
In other news, Ian McGarry claims NUFC owners ‘panicked’