Change can be turbulent and, although there has been some initial tension at Newcastle United, CEO Darren Eales and the club’s owners are confident that short-term upheaval will bring long-term progress.
Former co-owners Amanda Staveley and Mehrdad Ghodoussi have departed but since May, a new sporting director, performance director and chief operating officer (COO) have been among the key appointments.
As recently as September 2021, Lee Charnley, the managing director at the time, was the club’s only executive. He was stretched so thin that he was effectively overseeing several specialist roles.
In three years, the management structure has grown substantially. Eddie Howe, the head coach, may have felt some initial discomfort this summer, but he recognises the necessity of having a robust senior staffing setup if Newcastle are going to realise their huge ambitions.
Below is a flow chart, giving an idea of the hierarchy at Newcastle — although, in reality, it is far more nuanced and less linear.
So who are the figures in those important positions at St James’ Park? What are their responsibilities, who reports into who and where are these potential “boundary” crossovers Howe has hinted at?
Chairman Yasir Al-Rumayyan and the board
Newcastle’s board has slimmed from five members to four following Staveley’s exit. While the executive team run Newcastle on a day-to-day basis, the strategy is determined by the board and senior staff are answerable to the directors.
The most powerful figure at Newcastle is Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the club’s chairman and governor of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), whose majority stake has increased from 80 to 85 per cent. Al-Rumayyan is the ultimate decision-maker for big calls, especially those involving significant financial outlays. However, he is not involved every day, given the vast PIF portfolio he oversees.
There are two further PIF officials on Newcastle’s board. Abdulmajid Ahmed Alhagbani is head of PIF’s Middle East and North Africa securities investments, while Asmaa Mohammed Rezeeq heads up the firm’s global private equity and alternative investments division.
Other figures from PIF are prominent voices, even if they are not directors. Chief among them is Jacobo Solis, head of Europe direct investments at PIF. He featured on video calls during Amazon Prime’s We Are Newcastle United documentary and continues to hold sway. Sulaiman Al Beayeyz, from the same department as Solis, was also in the documentary.
Al-Rumayyan, pictured with Donald Trump in 2022, oversees the entire PIF portfolio (Cliff Hawkins/Getty Images)
The only non-PIF representative at the boardroom level is Jamie Reuben. The 37-year-old is the son of David Reuben and the nephew of Simon Reuben, the British billionaire businessman.
Reuben Brothers, their family firm, owns the remaining 15 per cent shareholding in Newcastle and Jamie Reuben is a visible presence at matches. He was at Adidas HQ in Herzogenaurach, Germany, this month for Newcastle’s pre-season training camp. During early post-takeover transfer windows, he was also involved in negotiations for deals and Howe’s appointment.
The Reuben family is not expected to follow Staveley and Ghodoussi by selling up imminently and is likely to retain its minority stake for the medium term.
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CEO Darren Eales
While Staveley and Ghodoussi were the public faces of the hierarchy post-takeover, Eales is being moved front and centre. That is no coincidence. As CEO, Eales is the highest-ranked employee and reports directly to the board.
If his decision-making ability was tamed slightly by the continued presence of Staveley and Ghodoussi, there is now a clear delineation between the boardroom and executive team. “They were the owners, rather than the day-to-day (operators), and the management team are now in place,” Eales said this month.
The 51-year-old arrived in August 2022 from Atlanta United, where he had been president, building the MLS expansion team from scratch to become cup winners. Previously, he served as legal director and club secretary at West Bromwich Albion, then executive director at Tottenham Hotspur.
Eales was headhunted by Newcastle and is tasked with growing their global appeal and, more importantly, turbocharging their revenues. Newcastle’s revenue has grown at around 30 per cent per year under Eales’ stewardship and is expected to surpass £300million ($386.6m) for 2023-24, a new club record.
Eales, left, with former co-owners Staveley and Ghodoussi in January (Stu Forster/Getty Images)
The CEO insists he wants to be outward-facing. He conducted public media briefings in January, around the release of the accounts, and also this month, following Newcastle’s effort to satisfy the Premier League’s profitability and sustainability rules (PSR) by June 30.
In consultation with PIF, Eales oversaw the appointment of Paul Mitchell as sporting director and the CEO led the drawn-out negotiations with Manchester United over a compensation package for Dan Ashworth, who he placed on gardening leave in February.
Going forward, Eales is responsible for shaping Newcastle’s direction of travel.
Sporting director Paul Mitchell
Although Mitchell is Ashworth’s successor as sporting director, the role’s remit has been tweaked.
Eales was prominent in the move to appoint Mitchell, who will oversee the entire footballing operation. All nine footballing departments — men’s first team, women’s first team, player recruitment, loans, academy, medical and sports science, analysis, psychology and mental wellbeing, and football operations — report to Mitchell.
Ashworth described himself as the “centre of the wheel” on the footballing side, with recruitment as only one strand of that, but Eales explained how Mitchell’s role is “90 per cent recruitment”. This follows conversations with Howe and the owners about what the position required and the belief that the recruitment department needed greater support.
After working at Southampton, Tottenham, RB Leipzig and Monaco, Mitchell brings a wealth of experience to Tyneside. He can name Sadio Mane, Dele Alli, Toby Alderweireld, Kieran Trippier, Son Heung-min, Christopher Nkunku and Vanderson among his impressive list of signings. For Mitchell, the key is to be data-informed, not data-led, with recruitment.
At Southampton, he was renowned for his ‘Black Box’ — a bespoke database of data and video clips. He also introduced sleep pods at Monaco’s performance centre to aid recovery. Having conducted a 90-day review of Monaco’s infrastructure upon his appointment, he then oversaw a complete rebuild of their training complex. He will be an influential voice in Newcastle’s search for a site for a new facility.
Mitchell, left, was a public-facing sports director at Monaco (Valery Hache/AFP/Getty Images)
Mitchell has been following Newcastle’s existing summer target lists but recruitment has slowed as the sporting director, in consultation with Howe, determines their direction. Mitchell wants to move on senior players to reduce the squad’s average age. Like Howe, he believes quality over quantity is the priority.
There were suggestions Ashworth did not always appreciate how hands-on the pair could be and sources — who asked to remain anonymous to protect relationships — believe Mitchell does not want involvement of that scale from above.
The fact Mitchell’s appointment followed Staveley and Ghodoussi’s exits does not appear coincidental. Mitchell had initially rejected Newcastle’s advances in the spring — his name was also floated before Ashworth’s appointment in 2022 — but he was persuaded once Crystal Palace’s Dougie Freedman turned down the club.
Ashworth kept his base in the Midlands but Mitchell, 42, believes it is important to re-locate to Tyneside to deliver in his all-consuming role.
At Monaco, Mitchell said his objectives were three-fold: to protect the club as a business, to inspire high performance and develop footballers. That is expected to be replicated at Newcastle.
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Business-operation executives
The financial side of a club is unglamorous and unsexy, which is perhaps why business-operations executives are less well-known. Yet at an ambitious, upwardly mobile club such as Newcastle where increasing revenues rapidly is essential, they are business critical and all report directly to Eales.
The most recent appointment was Brad Miller, who joined as COO in May. He is a chartered surveyor with a background in the aviation and property sectors, having helped deliver the £1.3billion transformation of Terminal 2 at Manchester Airport.
Miller is expected to play a role in elevating Newcastle’s infrastructure to world-class levels. Results are due “imminently”, according to Eales, from the feasibility study into whether an expansion of St James’ Park is viable, and Miller will be involved in works on the present stadium or the hunt for a new site.
Newcastle United are delighted to announce the appointment of Brad Miller as the club’s new Chief Operating Officer (COO).
— Newcastle United FC (@NUFC) May 31, 2024
Last July, Simon Capper arrived as chief financial officer (CFO).
Having previously worked for Sheffield United and Leicester City, Capper has significant experience in English football and he oversees Newcastle’s finance operations, including calculating the club’s PSR position.
Peter Silverstone joined as chief commercial officer in October 2022, having previously worked for Arsenal and OneFootball. More visible than the COO or CFO have been, Silverstone featured in the Amazon Prime documentary.
As his title suggests, Silverstone’s role is to source improved commercial deals, and he was influential in selecting Sela as the front-of-shirt sponsor — having approached more than 1,000 companies — and in bringing Adidas back as the kit provider. Silverstone had a previous relationship with Adidas from his time at Arsenal and, conservatively, the new deal is worth at least £25m annually, a more-than-four-fold increase on the Castore contract.
However, the Premier League’s associated-party transaction rules, which were rushed through in December 2021 in response to Newcastle’s takeover, have restricted the club’s ability to fully exploit their PIF connections.
Alongside Eales, Silverstone has helped rapidly increase Newcastle’s revenues, but the expectation on the pair is that they must bring in a greater number of lucrative partnerships going forward if the club is to regularly compete.
As with the CEO role, none of these three positions existed at the club pre-takeover.
Head coach Eddie Howe
While Howe’s title has always been “head coach”, his power has essentially extended to that of a manager — partly out of necessity, given the lack of executive structure when he joined, and partly because he wants to be involved in decision-making. He has been particularly influential in recruitment, holding the final say on all incomings.
Post-takeover signings have been Howe-led, from Trippier to Alexander Isak and Sven Botman. Botman had been watched long-term by head of recruitment Steve Nickson, Howe then ratified the addition.
Part of why Howe spoke out in Germany — having lost a supportive boardroom ally in Staveley — was the fear that he would be largely removed from the recruitment process following Mitchell’s appointment. Howe is not demanding the ultimate say, but a collective approach in which he holds a prominent voice alongside Mitchell.
Eales’ remarks that Mitchell would free the head coach “to use the strengths he’s got” and to “take away some of the things he would spend every waking hour on” because he is “phenomenal” on the training field suggested Howe’s authority was set to wane.
Howe appeared to be defending his power in interviews last week (Richard Heathcote/Getty Images)
But the sporting director and CEO have reassured Howe this week that recruitment will be collaborative, and that has pacified the head coach. Although Howe wants signings immediately, the club is taking a more conservative approach before making another firm move.
Mitchell intends to reform the scouting operation to ensure it is more data-led so that Howe is presented with greater information on potential targets, especially overseas, where players are viewed as better value for money.
Howe admitted that he has found this summer “very difficult” and, while he has been encouraged by conversations this week, forging relationships and outlining boundary roles remains a work in progress.
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Performance director James Bunce
The most recent recruit, Bunce has assumed the newly created role of performance director as, in Eales’ words, Newcastle “strive to be best in class”. During their review of 2023-24, the volume and severity of Newcastle’s injuries were highlighted. The hierarchy determined a specialist was needed to support the performance, sports science, medical nutrition and psychology departments and to “drive an elite performance culture”.
Bunce previously worked for the Premier League as head of elite performance and for U.S. Soccer as director of high performance. He also had performance roles at Southampton and Monaco, both as a colleague of Mitchell.
In Monaco, Bunce’s objective was to enable a high-intensity style while maintaining a low injury record — player availability increased from 76 per cent in 2020-21 to 90 per cent in 2021-22. The goal he has been set at Newcastle is similar.
Bunce previously worked at Monaco (Valery Hache/AFP/Getty Images)
Reporting directly to Mitchell, it is unclear whether Bunce supersedes Howe, is of an equivalent hierarchical standing, or is below the head coach, but their remits will overlap.
“My responsibility is to build an unbelievable relationship with the head coach,” is how Bunce has explained his role. “It was described by a previous coach as, ‘Me and you can’t be best friends, but we can be like a married couple’. My job is sometimes to sit down like a married couple and have a very difficult conversation. But we are having that conversation because we love each other and want to make this work.”
Howe is said to have been impressed by Bunce — the performance director was out in Germany and has been a visible presence at training — and the pair are already looking at how they can work together to reduce the incidence rate of injuries, something the head coach knows must improve.
Bunce is keen to ensure collaboration across medical, sports science and coaching departments, so that they can build a collective culture that focuses upon injury prevention and risk reduction.
Dan Hodges, the head of performance who followed Howe to Newcastle from Bournemouth, will theoretically fit under Bunce’s umbrella of staff but he has an established working relationship with the head coach.
Recruitment department
Now headed by Mitchell, who will make more significant contributions to transfer discussions than Ashworth did, the recruitment department is among the most important at Newcastle.
Given they cannot compete with the wages and transfer fees paid by the established elite, Newcastle must maximise their resources, with an expected focus on players aged 25 and under who have significant growth potential.
Nickson, the head of recruitment, was promoted during Mike Ashley’s tenure, after previously overseeing youth transfers at Newcastle. Having recommended Ayoze Perez, Kevin Mbabu and Rolando Aarons, Nickson impressed Ashley and earned his trust.
Nickson — who has always believed in the importance of psychological profiling and psychometric testing in player development and recruitment — pushed for the £60m outlay on Joelinton and Allan Saint-Maximin during the summer of 2019.
Newcastle United have appointed Steve Nickson as the club’s head of recruitment.
Full story: #NUFC #125YearsUnited pic.twitter.com/7xqDeEdRFz
— Newcastle United FC (@NUFC) July 1, 2017
Valued by the post-takeover hierarchy, Nickson has continued to recommend players and, having earned a master’s degree in sports directorship at the University of Salford, did assume some additional responsibilities when Newcastle did not have an active sporting director.
Andy Howe, meanwhile, has been “very prominent” in recruitment throughout Eddie Howe’s tenure, according to the head coach. Like Nickson, he identifies players and helps to whittle down target lists.
Having joined from Bournemouth as head of technical scouting ahead of the January 2022 window, Andy Howe’s title was tweaked to assistant head of recruitment this year as “recognition for what he has done”.
The nephew of Eddie, Andy Howe has been integral to Newcastle’s post-takeover recruitment operation and an influential voice during transfer discussions, as shown by the video calls on the documentary.
He pushed for the signings of Bruno Guimaraes and Sandro Tonali, two of Newcastle’s most expensive overseas imports, as well as the additions of Anthony Gordon, Tino Livramento and Lloyd Kelly, who he scouted at Bristol City and then lured to Bournemouth. Like the head coach, there is a shared desire to bring in a blend of domestic and foreign signings, with nationality irrelevant and the priority being to source the right players to suit Newcastle’s style and the club environment.
“He’s played a huge part in recruiting some key players,” Eddie Howe said.
Nickson and Andy Howe are expected to remain strong voices in recruitment — and to continue to speak with agents and clubs — even if Mitchell will be more hands-on with transfers.
The sporting director is set to review Newcastle’s scouting practices and introduce a more scientific approach.
Coaching and sports science department
Although the sporting director oversees all footballing operations, the coaching department report to Eddie Howe.
Jason Tindall is Howe’s long-term assistant coach. He is Howe’s trusted confidante, even if the pair are not close friends. They have a shared footballing philosophy. During the early post-takeover windows, Tindall also held a voice in transfer discussions.
Graeme Jones may not have Tindall’s long-held relationship with Howe, but the former Belgium assistant manager has been absorbed into the inner circle and offers an alternative perspective. Howe was keen to hear fresh opinions among his backroom staff and willingly inherited Jones at Newcastle.
Jones, left, and Tindall, right, offer opinions to Eddie Howe (Anthony Devlin/AFP/Getty Images)
Like Tindall, first-team coaches Simon Weatherstone and Stephen Purches also worked under Howe at Bournemouth. Adam Bartlett, the head of goalkeeping, was promoted internally in October 2022 following Simon Smith’s departure, and Shwan Jalal, who played under Howe at Bournemouth, joined as a goalkeeper coach.
The medical and sports science staff come under Mitchell and Bunce’s jurisdiction.
Hodges followed Howe from Bournemouth and is trusted to condition players to carry out his physical and athletic game plan. Newcastle have not clarified the exact hierarchical delineations of the new-look structure, but Hodges will technically answer more directly to Bunce than Howe, which represents a change.
The staff in the medical, sports science and physio departments — including Paul Catterson, the club doctor, Jonny King, the senior physio (the third of Howe’s tenure), and Liam Mason, the lead sports scientist — also fall under Bunce’s sphere of influence, though Mitchell is ultimately responsible for all footballing departments.
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(Top photo: Eddie Howe, Jamie Rueben, Darren Eales, Paul Mitchell and Peter Silverstone at the Adidas facilities in Germany this month; Serena Taylor/Newcastle United via Getty Images)
