Newcastle United’s new sporting director Paul Mitchell is ready to help build a team that Toon fans could fall in love with.
The 42-year-old is much than just a transfer chief and alongside performance director James Bunce the intention of the pair is to take a good hard look at everything from training loads to getting to the bottom of Newcastle’s chronic injury crisis from last season. But encouragingly, the chemistry of Newcastle’s playing style could well reflect the fans themselves.
Mitchell, speaking to the Athletic during his time at Monaco, said: “I like my teams to be a reflection of me; I’d like to say hard-working, a level of humility, controlled aggression and the potential to add physicality. In my first meeting with the fans here, they said to me, ‘We can accept losing to a degree, but only if we can be proud of the team in defeat’. That stuck with me.
“My non-negotiables are that players control the controllables; be as professional as you can, put high performance at the centre of everything, be humble as a team, always come off the pitch having given the maximum and be prepared to push the boundaries.”
All of the above will go down well with Newcastle supporters if a similar model from Mitchell is set for the Magpies. The arrival of performance director Bunce is equally as intriguing for the supporters.
Bunce works hand in hand with Mitchell and after Newcastle endured 41 injuries in the 2023/24 season, injury prevention is high on the agenda. Bunce, also speaking during his time at Monaco, once said: “The best injury prevention is good training, so having a coach that embraces sprinting and individualisation is good. We had two players step out of the session today and he is not going ‘you killed my session’ but instead understands the benefit of losing a player for ten minutes to stop you from losing him for six weeks.”
Ultimately, Mitchell and Bunce will work together with Eddie Howe and his backroom team. Quite what the change of set-up will look like at United remains to be seen, but one thing is certain, and that is things won’t be like they were before on Tyneside – hopefully for the better.
Mitchell’s philosophy with his manager was summed up a couple of years ago when he said: “I want a coach who understands the things in place to enable him to get better results. They are not designed to hurt him. The game has moved from the old school manager as you can have 200-300 people to manage at a football club.
“There is no logic to say a coach can manage all those people well. So to have a coach who operates in a measured, balanced and intelligent way is exactly where a coach should sit.”
