Think he is in for a shock at Newcastle if I’m honest.
I’d imagine their timescales for success and results are far quicker than what we’ve been expecting from him.
The things he is being brought in to do (if the Saudi PIF has any sense) take ages. Sorting out the football side from academy upwards will take years to produce meaningful and measurable results. It's a different story for managers there I'd imagine, but if they've got any sense (and there's no reason to think the people running a sovereign wealth fund are anything but shrewd - it's not some crazy billionaire wanting a plaything), a director of football will be given time unless it's an obvious disaster from the start.
Also I believe his success will depend on the support he has around him, whilst it’s clear he has helped us I’m sure a big chunk of what he has done has been due to the team and the support he has every day.
He'll have more 'support' in terms of budget, which will make life a bit easier. It remains to be seen who else he'll be working with, but I doubt their recruitment has finished. It's going to be very difficult to beat our set-up in terms of the people immediately above and below, but he has seemingly done a good job at the FA and WBA beforehand without that great support, so will fancy his chances again.
I’m not as nervous as some are surrounding recruitment and scouting of players, it’s very obvious that isn’t down to him as we have two other people in charge of that who then report into Ashworth. I’m sure if they find a good player it will still be dealt with in the same way and we aren’t going to suddenly miss out on players to Newcastle.
Absolutely this. It's a blow to lose someone doing a great job, but the way we are run means it won't bring the whole project crashing down. There's now a very attractive vacancy either for someone internal to progress, or to find the next up and coming DoF to finish the job Dan Ashworth started (Marc Overmars could do a job )
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