Paul Mitchell, Newcastle’s sporting director, says Eddie Howe is capable of leading the Saudi Arabian-owned club to football’s glittering prizes and he is not overly fearful of the manager’s head being turned by a potential approach from England.
“I’ve never been scared of interest in our head coach,” Mitchell said. “Especially from the Football Association. I am proud. I think it’s a recognition of the two and a half years he’s done here and the job he did at Bournemouth. We want Eddie Howe as our head coach for as long as we can but we also recognise his quality and potential.”
Although Howe is understood to feature on an FA shortlist including, among others, the interim England coach Lee Carsley, Newcastle’s manager has indicated that – providing his relationships with Mitchell and the club’s new performance director, James Bunce, progress favourably – he would prefer to remain at St James’ Park. “I’m excited to work with Eddie,” Mitchell said. “He can go on this journey with us, however far our ambition stretches.”
Despite Newcastle’s failure to sign the England defender Marc Guéhi from Crystal Palace after a four-week pursuit, it appears that the concerns raised by Howe in July regarding Mitchell and Bunce possibly diminishing his autonomy are receding. “Eddie has shown an ability to evolve,” Mitchell, who was appointed in July, said. “Eddie’s very smart and he knows there needs to be evolution. He’s been super receptive to adding a high‑level member of the team [Bunce].”
Mitchell believes he and Howe are bonding well. “It’s a working relationship and it does take time to build trust,” he said. “But we have some really good conversations. Eddie’s got a great sense of humour. We speak every night and every day on all different topics. We speak for literally one hour every evening. My wife doesn’t get that! For me that’s a healthy level of communication. Eddie’s a super impressive coach on the grass, I’m excited to see where that takes us.”
The former Monaco sporting director said that the forlorn pursuit of Guéhi should be interpreted as a warning to rivals that Newcastle are no longer prepared to pay the so-called “Toon tax”. Mitchell’s refusal to meet Palace’s £70m asking price has been criticised in some quarters but he believes it also set an important precedent that could prevent Newcastle from being asked to pay over the odds in future.
Although he was adamant that the ambition of the club’s Saudi owners burns as brightly as ever and European qualification remains a “realistic” target for Howe’s side this season, Mitchell made it plain that a “smarter” and more “sustainable” strategy involving selling as well as buying players is needed over the next five years.
“Is there a point of [maximum] value for every player and did maybe this football club need to draw a line in the sand of ‘we’re not going to overpay’? We’ve signed some really good players in the past but have some of them potentially cost more money than they should? You could probably have that discussion.
“The Newcastle tax has been a real thing. Now it’s about setting precedents to the market that we will pay fair value for the right profile of player. It shouldn’t be misconceived as a lack of ambition. Yasir Al-Rumayyan [Newcastle’s chairman] is as ambitious and enthused as ever.”
As Mitchell pointed out, profit and sustainability rules dictate that Newcastle’s commercial revenues need time to catch up with the net £250m spent on transfers since the club’s Saudi-led takeover in October 2021. “Of course it would have been easier to sit here with hallmark signings that cost a load of money,” he said.
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“But ultimately that would be for Paul Mitchell’s glorification to the detriment of Newcastle’s ability to grow high-strategic, long-term ambitions and that’s not the job I’m paid to do. You’ve got to be careful not to be driven by your own ego. And I think what’s been lost in the summer is that we’ve forgotten the quality of the team we already have here. We’ve got great players.
“The £250m net we’ve invested over the last two and a half-years is a lot of money. European qualification is a realistic ambition this season and I think that has to be the challenge for us.”
When Mitchell arrived on Tyneside in early July he inherited “pre-existing” transfer plans drawn up by a committee of club executives including the former co-owner Amanda Staveley and believes he should be judged on future windows. “I think we do have to be more global in the players we sign,” he said. “We need to find undervalued talent at a certain age profile. I think we need to stretch our [recruitment] radius and find undervalued pockets of talent.
“If we look at great teams at their peak, they’ve sold big players to other clubs [in order to refresh other parts of the team]. I think sales need to become part of our strategy but that shouldn’t be detrimental to our performance. That’s the model we need to entrench here.”