Leeds United's newly appointed interim football advisor Nick Hammond knows how to balance a 'long-term plan with a short-term problem' as he gets to work at Elland Road in a situation that he has faced before.
Leeds confirmed on Thursday morning that Hammond has joined the club on a short-term contract in order to assist the club during the summer transfer window. Hammond's CV contains consultancy stints at both Celtic and Newcastle United, where the respected 55-year-old was tasked with steering teams through transfer windows during transitional periods.
The Whites are currently waiting for the 49ers Enterprises' takeover to be completed after an agreement was reached on Friday evening for the minority owners to purchase Andrea Radrizzani's stake in the team. That, along with relegation from the Premier League, plus vacancies in the head coach and director of football positions meant that the club has been in a state of flux as the clock ticks ahead of the new Championship season.
Hammond's first consultancy role came at Celtic for the summer 2019 transfer window and he impressed enough to then be handed a permanent role as the head of football operations at Parkhead.
READ MORE: Leeds United appoint Nick Hammond as club's interim football advisor
But is his work at Newcastle that echos more the challenge facing him at Leeds United. Hammond signed on at the Magpies shortly before the January 2022 window, as the club faced their first transfer window under their new ownership, still facing a battle against the drop following a poor start to the season.
"At Newcastle I came a couple of weeks before the beginning of December," Hammond told Training Ground Guru last year. "To me, it was a really interesting and obviously quite an exciting opportunity to come and work with the new owners of which there are three groups. Eddie Howe who I knew from being in the game for a long time and Steve Nickson, head of recruitment, an extremely good, experienced head of recruitment.
"I think Newcastle have a long-term plan for sure, but they had a short-term problem when they were going into the January window. Quite clearly they wanted to appoint a new CEO, a new sporting director and build the club out from there. But in the short term they were approaching the January window and wanted someone who had a degree of experience navigating through the complexities of any transfer window, let alone a January window. So that was the start of the conversation.
"It was interesting in as much as here you had a group of people that all want to achieve the same thing, but they're new, they're almost thrown together, I don't mean that in a haphazard way. A new group of owners, a new head coach, Steve who's been in the building for a long time and all of sudden in a very short space of time had t come together and make decisions to try and strengthen the team n what was the short term ambition of staying in the Premier League."
There are obviously clear parallels with the boardroom situation at Elland Road and Hammond went on to give further insight into exactly how he went about his work at St James' Park.
"My role was a little bit more in the background than I would be as a normal sporting director,” he continued. "As a sporting director over my career I would lead the discussions, lead the negotiations with potential signings.
"This role was sort of a step removed from that, doing the checks and balances in the background, having an opinion on the players who had already been identified by Steve Nickson and his team, having taken a good steer from Eddie Howe, the new head coach, who had to make very quick decisions in terms of where he saw his squad."
Aided by the deep pockets of their new owners, Newcastle signed the likes of Kieran Trippier, Chris Wood, Bruno Guimaraes, Matt Targett and Dan Burn in that January window, who helped the club pull away from the relegation zone and help set up the basis of a Champions League qualification campaign the following season.
