Paul Mitchell drops Newcastle United transfer bombshell after failed £70m Marc Guehi pursuit

The Newcastle chief felt he had to adapt to the club’s pre-existing transfer plans driven by head coach Eddie Howe and suggested the club’s scouting network is in need of an overhaul heading into future windows.

Mitchell arrived at Newcastle in his new role in July, by that time the club had already sold Elliot Anderson and Yankuba Minteh to avoid a PSR points deduction and brought in Odysseas Vlachodimos, John Ruddy, Lloyd Kelly and made Lewis Hall’s loan move from Chelsea permanent.

The only signing since Mitchell’s appointment to date is the £15million arrival of 21-year-old Will Osula from Sheffield United, a player the Magpies sporting director described as a ‘strategic investment’. The final month of Newcastle’s transfer window was dominated by the club’s pursuit of Crystal Palace Marc Guehi with transfer bids of between £60million and £70million reported.

The club remained in dialogue with Palace up until the transfer deadline and could return for Guehi in the future.

With the window now closed, Mitchell explained his ‘supporting’ rather than ‘driving’ role in Newcastle’s summer business, with the club already having a transfer strategy in place for the summer prior to his arrival.

“My learning coming in, in a prearranged, existing strategy is hard,” Mitchell said. “You ultimately then find yourself supporting on things more than driving elements of it. That for me was a learning.

“There are things we got wrong in our strategy for sure. Me coming in when I did probably wasn’t the best timing for the organisation but what it has done is allow me to witness a process.

“And now it allows to me to analyse that process and make sure we put the next – ultimately January, next summer, five years down the line – process in place where we can become a sustainable high performer. As custodians of this club we can’t just keep spending, spending because at some point that won’t enable the club to facilitate its goals and I don’t think any Newcastle fan wants to see this club in a place where other clubs were last season with docked points, with financial penalties because that can really affect our growth.”

Mitchell also highlighted it was important for the club to ‘set a precedent’ that they would not overpay for any player in the transfer market.

“The [Newcastle tax] was a real thing,” he said. “It's about setting precedents to the market that we will pay fair value for the right profile [of player] for sure.

“It shouldn't be misconceived of a lack of ambition, I just think that's the model you have to work in the modern game now. There's a lot of common factors that we need to adjust that we need to make sure we keep being sustainably successful.

“It should not be lobbied against ambition because if we just spend, spend, spend, spend once again, we become accountable to that by penalties, fines and points deductions and that isn't good leadership, that isn't being a good custodian of the club, that isn't taking your role responsibly, you're being negligent. That is only for one thing, it's for your ego. We're not going to do that.” 

Newcastle’s inability to identify and acquire suitable alternatives when their pursuit of Guehi was floundering was a major gripe for many scrutinising the summer transfer business. But Mitchell was open in questioning whether the club’s existing scouting network was ‘fit for purpose’.

While discussions took place with other players, Mitchell was honest in admitting: "Should our scouting and recruitment be driven more extensively with a wider reaching net? It definitely should be because this is becoming a really nuanced space now, when you just can't capitally fund everything every year and buying loads of players at peak age and peak price.

“Of course it needs to be, and that's the responsibility of me, the scouting team, the recruitment team and Eddie. To do that, to look at that. Is it fit for purpose? 

"It's kind of the next phase of the growth of this project. We have to become better in this area of expertise, and there's a skill.”

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While Howe repeatedly distanced himself from Newcastle’s business when speaking to the media during the transfer window, Mitchell stressed that The Magpies boss still holds power in the process and was kept ‘very updated’ throughout.

“Every single player we looked at, Ed wanted and wanted to explore, wanted to try and sign or wanted to have an extensive conversation,” Mitchell revealed.

“There was no player that got to a certain level of discussion where you're talking about connection with the club that currently owns that player's registration and real intent to try and sign that player, that he wasn't part of the deciding and saying, ‘that's the guy I want’.

"Ultimately, unless Eddie really felt a player was going to have a difference and bring a difference to the starting XI, we'd rather not overpay that once again in the next window could become a limiting factor for the future, but also the recognition we have a really good team full of internationals.”

Mitchell added: “Would it have been easier to sit in front of you all with hallmark signings that cost a load of money? Of course it would. But ultimately have them at the detriment to Newcastle’s ability to grow and high strategic ambitions for Paul Mitchell’s glorification, that’s not the job I’m paid to do. I’m paid to do the job in the short, the medium the long-term.”

Newcastle have a net transfer spend of around £250million over the last two-and-a-half years. Although money is available to invest in the squad, June’s close shave with PSR punishment has led to an increased level of caution at the club.

"We can't do what we probably have done in the last two and a half years and just say right, let's just physically and only capitally fund this and not sell a player and just build that way because we've already - through great work by many involved, including Eddie, including Darren Eales - got ourselves out of quite a big hole between June and July,” Mitchell continued.

"I think we have to be smarter and more intelligent not to find ourselves in that hole again. So I think that there is a strategy that comes into play. I think if we could have signed a player that we actively could make a really good squad better, would we? Of course we would. 

"Was, let's say, the scouting network, the lengths and breadths of our process and our strategies in terms of just that area of expertise, including the influence of Eddie Howe, bigger and broader enough? Probably not. And that's the bit we analyse to be better. That's the bit where we have to adjust and modernise.

"And also, maybe that's a bit of reality as well, like, can we spend to the same level as what we've spent the last two and a half years? When sustainability is real, you cannot keep spending and not selling any football players. The maths doesn't work. 

"I think you look at the teams that have really heavily spent this summer, they've sold players at certain points in the last couple of years, that has helped fund their spends this year, we haven't in the last two-and-a-half years.

“They come in equal measure, you know, and that's the responsibility of the holistic club, from the head coach, who is very widely influencing all of these decisions, to myself in my new responsibility as the sporting director, to the CEO, to the overarching business.”