Newcastle United recruitment strategy namechecks Jude Bellingham & Erling Haaland after £7m deal agreed

Former Manchester United scout Marcel Bout has provided some insight into the type of players he will be targeting for Newcastle United.

Head coach Eddie Howe confirmed Bout's imminent arrival as chief scout for players aged 16 to 23 at Newcastle by stating he is 'a welcome addition to the football club'.

Bout joined Man United under Louis Van Gaal in 2014 and has also worked at Bayern Munich and with the Netherlands national team. He left Manchester United in 2022 and has since agreed to join Newcastle's expanding recruitment team.

The Magpies' recruitment network has been significantly expanded in recent seasons with the appointments of a number of scouts both nationally and internationally.

And with Newcastle having to navigate Financial Fair Play regulations while also improving the side in the long-term, sporting director Dan Ashworth has placed emphasis on signing younger players for more modest transfer fees. 

And that sentiment was echoed as Bout explained his aims at Newcastle to the Sunday Mirror.

“I am looking for the new [Erling] Haaland, [Jude] Bellingham and [Jamal] Musiala," Bout said. “I am focusing on young talent up to 23-years-old who have the potential to get into Newcastle’s first team. "My motto is that if you constantly look to the left then you can’t see anything on the right. So I look everywhere. Newcastle have brought me in to find all the big talents. I want to find the pounds among the pennies. “It is my ambition to not only point out those big talents, but also to put everything into place so these players immediately arrive at Newcastle United. I want to bring them in before they are worth £100 million.”

While Newcastle have spent significant transfer fees on the likes of Anthony Gordon, Sven Botman, Sandro Tonali and Alexander Isak over the past two seasons, all of them were aged 23 or below when they arrived.

But away from the first team, United have also invested in teenage talents such as Garang Kuol and Yankuba Minteh, who joined the club from Odense for £7million in the summer before being loaned out to Feyenoord.

It is understood that Bout will be tasked with finding players more along the lines of Minteh - who have high potential but can be acquired for relatively low transfer fees.