In the weeks leading up to the January transfer window, you may recall a certain Nick Hammond being brought in on a short-term basis to help with recruitment.
With no CEO or Director of Football in place, the former Reading, West Brom and Celtic Technical Director came in to support our new owners, Eddie Howe and Steve Nickson ahead of what promised to be a vital period for the club in our bid to beat the drop.
In the end, we brought in Kieran Trippier, Chris Wood, Matt Targett, Bruno Guimaraes and Dan Burn over a January window full of hurdles. After all, we were a relegation threatened club with big money, a desperate need for new signings, a lack of experience at the top and huge pressure to deliver the deals needed to boost our survival hopes.
A few months on, Hammond has finally gone public about his short stint at St James’ Park, seeing him discuss the ‘exciting opportunity’, the role he played, our ‘extremely good’ Head of Recruitment, the meticulous Eddie Howe, our new owners and the short and long-term plans they have on Tyneside.
Speaking to the Training Ground Guru, here’s what he’s had to say about his time at the club:
“To me, it was a really interesting and quite exciting opportunity to come and work with the new owners, of which there are three groups; with Eddie Howe, who I knew from being in the game for a long time; and Steve Nickson, an extremely good, experienced Head of Recruitment.
“Newcastle have a long-term plan, for sure, but they had a short-term problem when we were going into the January window. Quite clearly they wanted to appoint a new CEO, a new Sporting Director and build the club out from there, but in the short term they were approaching the January window and looking for someone who had a degree of experience navigating trough the complexities of any transfer window, let alone a January window.
“My job, really, was to advise the owners in relation to the players, the due diligence around the players and the financial aspects of the deals they were trying to complete.
“I said to the guys at the start, this will be the hardest transfer window you’ll probably ever have, because you are literally a group of people coming together in a very short space of time and having to hit the ground running.
“Fortunately there’s a very experienced Head Coach there, a very clear thinking guy, very precise in terms of what he wants and what he wanted, which is critical for a Head Coach – that clarity that comes from them is massively important. Fortunately Eddie Howe gave that to the people dealing with the transfer window at Newcastle.
“My role (at Newcastle) was a little bit more in the background than I would be as a normal Sporting Director, as a Sporting Director over my career I would lead the discussions, lead the negotiations with potential signings.
“This role was sort of a step removed from that, doing the checks and balances in the background, having an opinion on the players who had already been identified by Steve Nickson and his team, having taken a good steer from Eddie Howe, the new Head Coach, who had to make very quick decisions in terms of where he saw his squad.
“It was a fascinating experience, I thoroughly enjoyed it, but very challenging time for them (the owners).
“It was interesting in as much as here you’ve got a group of people who all want to achieve the same thing but they’re new, they’re almost thrown together.
“I don’t mean that in a haphazard way, but new group of owners; new Head Coach; Steve (Nickson), who’s been in the building for a long time, and all of a sudden in a very short space of time you’ve got to come together and make some decisions to try and strengthen the team for what is the short term ambition of staying in the Premier League.”
