It was not so long ago that Lee Charnley, Steve Nickson and Steve Bruce were sitting around the table preparing for what proved to be the final window of the Ashley era. A lot has changed at Newcastle United since then.
However, while several influential figures have moved on, or been moved on, following the club's takeover last October, tellingly, Nickson has survived. Newcastle's head of recruitment has impressed the club's new owners in recent months with his knowledge, attention to detail and work ethic, and Amanda Staveley has even said that 'we really rate him'.
Nickson, after all, played an influential role alongside Eddie Howe, Jason Tindall and the club's hierarchy in the build-up to January and during the mid-season window itself. Just as Howe identified targets, Nickson and his recruitment team also provided names and data, which the Newcastle head coach then sifted through to decide who was worth pursuing.
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Given the hours Howe was already spending working on the training pitches, the fate of these pursuits would then be left in the hands of others, who would keep the head coach up to date late at night. It was Nickson, for example, who physically flew out to Belo Horizonte with club doctor Paul Catterson to finalise the Bruno Guimaraes deal.
Howe was kept informed throughout as contracts were signed and the midfielder's medical took place, and it was certainly not the first time that Nickson had travelled to the other side of the world on club business. While Eric Kinder described his former Blackburn Rovers colleague as 'one of the funniest people you could ever wish to meet', Nickson was always a 'different animal' when it came to work.
"When I try to ring him these days, he's never in the country," Kinder told ChronicleLive. "He's always somewhere. His private life must take a hell of a battering.
"But he wanted to be successful, he wanted to work in professional football, he wanted to get as high as he could and he's achieved that simply through his enthusiasm and love of the game. He's flying out to Brazil to sort out a £40m deal. Flipping heck! If you said to him 20 years ago, you will be in Brazil trying to deal with a £40m transfer, we would have all sat in a beach bar in Portugal laughing our heads off."
Newcastle may be about to appoint a sporting director in Dan Ashworth, but it would be a surprise if Nickson did not continue to play an influential role in this new era. Recruitment will only be one part of Ashworth's huge brief, after all, and the new arrival will also oversee the men's first team, the women's team, the academy, medical and sports science, and the loans department.
Planning is already under way for the summer window and Ashworth will not necessarily want to rip up the foundations that are already in place when he eventually comes in. The 50-year-old will instead look to provide the additional support the club's departments have long required.
In Ashworth's first six to eight months at the FA, for example, the technical director was keen to observe to see what was working, where the gaps were and what could be joined up before then putting in place a new structure. It was a similar story at Brighton and Ashworth kept a number of leading figures in place who were already at the club, such as head of recruitment Paul Winstanley.
Winstanley led on incoming deals during their time together while Ashworth handled outgoings and contracts. If Brighton were after several players at once during a busy period in a transfer window, Winstanley, Ashworth and chief executive Paul Barber might divide them up but, crucially, it was always a collaborative effort.
It is not difficult to imagine a similar arrangement at Newcastle - the club also set to appoint a CEO in the coming months - and it is worth noting that Ashworth and Nickson already know each other from the circuit. The pair also share similar views to Howe on the importance of signing the right sort of characters.
On that point, Nickson and Tony Faulkner, the former head of performance and medical at Blackburn's academy, previously developed a profiling model in collaboration with Stanford University to analyse the psycho-social characteristics of Rovers' youngsters. Nickson, according to Faulkner, 'takes the holistic approach' when looking at a target, which is all the more important given Newcastle's newfound wealth.
"Steve is then able to give a club a very detailed analysis on who this individual is as a person first and foremost, where this individual may need some support with regards to his character, his personality and areas of development in that area," Faulkner told ChronicleLive. "That then allows the club to have a more realistic expectation of what this player could achieve over the period of time when he comes into Newcastle.
"Hard work is one of his major strengths. He really does put the hours in with regard to watching games, watching players and developing those relationships.
"It's not just about having those contacts. That's extremely important in the game of football nowadays, but it's also about being able to recognise who are the potential agents that are just looking for a deal and who are the potential agents that want to develop a longer-term relationship for the benefit of the football club and player."
Nickson, who prefers to keep a low profile, first came under the microscope following Newcastle's £40m move for Joelinton nearly three years ago. While Joelinton has since flourished as a box to box midfielder, it has never been established who bizarrely recommended the record signing as a future number nine.
Regardless, Nickson has taken on a hands-on role with transfers for several years at Newcastle, whether it is dealing with the selling club, physically watching the player himself or speaking to agents.
Darren Eales, Atlanta United's president, told ChronicleLive that Nickson was 'always very professional to deal with throughout' during Newcastle's lengthy pursuit of Miguel Almiron in 2019 while a source close to Ayoze Perez added that the transfer chief showed 'a lot of vision' in convincing the Spaniard to join the club ahead of Porto five years previously.
Nickson's work does not just stop when negotiations are completed, however. ChronicleLive understands Nickson has been 'very helpful' to Allan Saint-Maximin since he joined the club and 'always been a support'. So much so, Nickson helped persuade the mercurial forward to sign a new six-year contract in 2020.
Nickson was also keen to support those players at Blackburn's academy during his spell as the club's head of youth recruitment. Indeed, Nickson often watched training and spoke to the youngsters at lunch as striker Matt Derbyshire recalled.
"Steve felt like the guy that everyone could go to or he would come to you," Derbyshire told ChronicleLive. "He was always congratulating you when you did well and putting an arm around the players when it wasn't going so well."
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