Newcastle sporting director Dan Ashworth has revealed how the club have targeted becoming a ‘sustainable top six club’ following our first Champions League finish in two decades.
By sustainable, Ashworth explained how that means developing different departments of the club, like the academy; which he describes as ‘really important’ to this vision.
Over the years, the academy has been hugely neglected, so it’s great to finally see some top young talents grow with the club rather than be picked off by the ‘big six.’
Ashworth also gave a nod to other departments like ‘recruitment and the first team’ which are, of course, hugely important and have been vastly improved in the last 18 months.
Here’s what Ashworth said during a Q & A with the University Campus of Football Business:
“The vision set by the Newcastle United board is to be a sustainable top six club. Sustainable will bring in things like the academy, for example.
“It’s really important that we produce players from within the academy so they can feel connected to how that vision would work.
“We can work with the rest of the departments – be it recruitment, first team, whoever it may be – to try and achieve that vision with some sort of strategic plan for Newcastle United.”
It’s still early days in the ownership’s long-term projects, but there are very encouraging signs to suggest that we are going to become a big problem for those traditional big six sides.
