A BT Sport interview of Newcastle’s potential new director of football Dan Ashworth has got supporters clamouring for his appointment.
The former Brighton chief has emerged as the front runner to take up a similar role at St James’ Park after resigning on Monday.
Ashworth previously spent five years at the FA as head of elite development, a stint that has helped the Three Lions unleash a conveyor belt of talent from St George’s Park.
The ex-Seagulls supremo was given a pitchside grilling in October 2019 about his role on the south coast, with Jermaine Jenas and Joe Cole intrigued by the 50-year-old’s success.
Eddie Howe would still be tasked with coaching the players as Ashworth explains how his job does not involve intruding in the dressing room.
“The technical director’s role is best described as looking after the interests of the club in a medium to long term,” he told BT Sport.
“My job is not at 12.30 today (matchday), tactical systems or anything like that. That's Graham’s (Potter) job.
“There's six things that come to me. The men's first team, women's first team, player recruitment, the academy, medical and sports science and the player loan department.
“All of those are medium to long term things such as medical, player loans, the academy, player recruitment, in order to make sure the club is sustainable.
“We spend our money wisely and open up pathways for young players to come through the system. And that's one of the things that was really important to Brighton.”
Ashworth went in-depth about the blueprint a modern-day football club must follow, a sign of possible things to come if he does land the gig on Tyneside.
“What you do is you hire a coach that matches the philosophy the club wants to go,” Ashworth added.
“What Tony (Bloom, Brighton chairman) wouldn't do is hire a coach that was totally against the philosophy. My job, as you say, is to stitch that together.
“Then, it is about making sure the U23s, the 18s and the academy put the right plans around the young players, we get them out on loan in the right places, to give them every chance of being able to play for Brighton and play for Graham.”
“Our views is if you keep changing the head coach every sort of 14 months or so, which I think is about the average lifespan of a manager unfortunately nowadays, and then you go from one philosophy to the other, you've got no chance of joining up your loans, your academy, your development programme and your player recruitment.
“You end up having to change 16, 17, 18 players in order to change the philosophy.
“It's about long term planning in order to get the best out of the resources.”
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