Another game, another defeat, another day closer to January, which increasingly feels like a defining month for Newcastle United.
Away from the pitch, where the team have now won just one of their first 17 league fixtures this season, preparations are winding up for the winter transfer window, with the club’s new owners hiring Nick Hammond, the former Celtic and Reading director of football, as a temporary consultant.
Hammond will provide counsel and expertise ahead of one of the most important windows in Newcastle’s history.
His task — to help the club secure, as a minimum, a centre-back, full-back and central midfielder who will immediately improve the first XI — appears as gargantuan as the one Eddie Howe, the head coach appointed last month, faces in keeping Newcastle in the Premier League.
Wednesday’s 3-1 loss away to Liverpool leaves them 19th in the table, three points from safety and with a worse goal difference (minus-19) than any other side barring Norwich City, who are bottom. They have played two more games than Burnley, the side immediately above them, and one more than 17th-place Watford. Only West Bromwich Albion, in 2004-05, have won just one of their opening 17 fixtures and stayed up since the Premier League era began in 1992.
Newcastle’s next two matches are against Manchester City, the league leaders and defending champions, and a Manchester United side going for a third league win in a row since replacing Ole Gunnar Solskjaer with Ralf Rangnick, so their predicament may become even more precarious before the mid-season trading period can offer the possibility of salvation.
With Howe’s appointment bringing little tangible uplift in results, aside from the 1-0 victory over Burnley earlier this month, Newcastle are increasingly relying on their transfer business to lift them away from the bottom three.
But that situation becomes more complicated when you take into account the lack of leadership structures in place at St James’ Park.
Sources at Newcastle say that Amanda Staveley and Mehrdad Ghodoussi, the husband-and-wife team who have the management contract to run the club, have been working “flat out”, pursuing potential new signings. They and fellow director Jamie Reuben have taken hands-on roles in planning and negotiations, in tandem with Howe and Steve Nickson, Newcastle’s chief scout, who have identified prospective targets. Lee Charnley, the former managing director, left last month and the hunt for a heavyweight chief executive is also taking time.
The Athletic understands that Newcastle’s consortium, which is backed by the financial might of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), is wedded to implementing a sporting director model. Present in the directors’ box at Anfield, Staveley and Ghodoussi witnessed first hand the detailed executive set-up Liverpool have in place — something which, over time, they hope to emulate on Tyneside.
But, while the board led the search for a new head coach following the post-takeover departure of Steve Bruce in October, and conducted the managerial interviews, a third-party recruitment firm, Nolan Partners, is handling the process to source a senior football official, and that will not be completed before January.
Howe was asked before Newcastle’s 4-0 defeat at Leicester City on Sunday how much progress had been made in finding the right person. “That’s above me,” he said. “I’ll work with whoever the club chooses for that role, and I’ll be excited to do so. I think ultimately it’s something, a position, the club wants to fill and I embrace that.”
Several candidates have already been spoken to, including Michael Emenalo, the ex-Chelsea director of football. It was reported recently that Emenalo had withdrawn from consideration, although Ghodoussi tweeted that the former Nigeria international was “never offered the job of sporting director or director of football”.
In the meantime, Hammond will fill the breach, using his knowledge of the game and array of contacts to advise the board on recruitment.
A goalkeeper for Swindon Town, among others, in his playing days, the 54-year-old has most recently been working for Scottish giants Celtic as head of football operations, a position he resigned from in March.
Hammond also spent two years as West Bromwich Albion’s technical director, but is best known for his two decades at Reading, where he played a key role in the club’s rise to the Premier League for the first time in their history in 2006, handling player recruitment and contract negotiations. He was also responsible for appointing Steve Coppell, the manager who took them up.
At Newcastle, his remit will be to guide Newcastle through a challenging month which could make or break their hopes of avoiding a third relegation to the Championship in the last 14 seasons. Defence is a particular concern — they are conceding a league-worst average of 2.2 goals per game — but Howe is also committed to a front-foot style which the current squad is ill-suited to.
A ball-playing, athletic centre-back, a dynamic midfielder and a progressive full-back are among the priority positions that require strengthening. The “serious” hamstring injury Jamal Lewis suffered at Anfield, and the subsequent struggles of makeshift left-back Matt Ritchie, have only magnified the need for defensive reinforcements. Kieran Trippier, the Atletico Madrid and England right-back, is of interest, but luring quality players to join a Tyneside relegation battle will be far from straightforward.
Ideally, an attacking midfielder and a striker would also arrive, but conducting such extensive surgery on a squad in January is rare and also notoriously difficult. Newcastle’s plight in the bottom three only exacerbates that, even if PIF’s financial resources may prove to be an invaluable inducement.
At this stage, it is not thought that Hammond is in the running for the permanent sporting director role. Newcastle want a substantive figure who has the nous to influence all aspects of the football operation, from the first team, to the academy to the construction of a new training ground, with potential sites across the city and wider region being considered. “We need someone to build the club,” a senior source said.
Over the next six weeks, however, Hammond could prove pivotal in determining whether whoever is eventually appointed as sporting director is able to build upon Premier League foundations, or whether their revamp begins in the Championship.
Newcastle’s January recruitment drive really does feel that critical to their top-flight future.
