Newcastle United’s technical director Dan Ashworth is looking increasingly likely to move to Manchester United.
That’s according to The Telegraph with Sir Jim Ratcliffe and his Ineos team understandably looking for the best in class to take Manchester United up a level off the pitch.
With Premier League approval now completed in terms of their investment, efforts to bring Dan Ashworth on board are set to ramp up.
It’s fair to say that the 52-year-old has a superb reputation in English football.
Dan Ashworth praise
After being moved over from the academy scene at West Bromwich Albion to the sporting director role in 2007, the Englishman has gone from strength to strength and you could argue he’s been one of England’s pioneers for that role.
He then moved on to work with the FA and England’s national team in 2012, before moving to Brighton & Hove Albion and then Newcastle United in February of 2022, which was seen as a real coup for the Geordie side.
“For many within football, Dan (Ashworth) would have been top of the list for who they thought Newcastle needed on the technical side,” Alex Horne, who was FA general secretary when Ashworth was with the FA, told The Athletic at the time of his appointment.
What’s interesting about Ashworth’s role, however, is that recruitment is not his only specialty. During his time at Brighton, he was in charge of seven departments at the club.
If he is to take the reins at Old Trafford, you would expect him to have a similar role, which perhaps could mean that Paul Mitchell could be brought in as a sporting director to focus solely on transfers.
Ashworth himself has previously loathed the idea of a technical director focusing solely on transfers, branding that idea as a “misconception” when speaking to the Training Ground Guru podcast.
One area United have struggled in over the years is having authority and a good relationship with clubs across Europe, this was something Ashworth excelled in during his time at the FA.
“He was a game-changer for our relationship with the clubs,” Horne told The Athletic.
Despite Ashworth’s reticence that a technical director focuses solely on transfers, during his first pre-season at Newcastle, Eddie Howe was grateful to have Ashworth’s expertise in that matter.
“I can’t speak highly enough of him, as he has been a big help on the transfer front, he has got really good contacts in the game,” Howe told Newcastle United magazine The Mag.
Ashworth’s authority
During the dark days of Ed Woodward’s leadership of the club, the Red Devils would, truth be told, be made a fool of in the transfer market and made to pay ridiculous sums of money for their transfer targets.
With Ashworth at the club, however, the authority that the former Norwich City academy defender would bring to the club could be revolutionary for United trying to break back into the top bracket of the European elite.
This could be the single biggest appointment in United’s modern history, certainly since Sir Alex Ferguson retired in 2013.
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