Keeping it in the family: Andy Howe promoted to assistant head of first-team recruitment

Newcastle United have had a little bit of a backroom shuffle in the wake of Dan Ashworth's departure with tweaks made to the recruitment team.

As has been the case for a while now, Steve Nickson remains the head of first-team recruitment but he will now be helped out by the gaffer's nephew, Andy Howe.

Andy Howe was previously head of technical scouting which, after a quick Google search seems to be a data-driven scouting rather than physically attending games. Basically, Andy Howe used to be the head of playing Football Manager but now gets to do the job for real.

Eddie Howe hasn't got into transfer mode just yet

The move comes after Dan Ashworth was placed on gardening leave, you have to imagine that the two things are related given how much Dan Ashworth was involved in recruitment.

In his pre-match press conference this morning Eddie Howe said that he'd not had many meetings around the summer recruitment but doesn't expect things to change despite Ashworth's departure.

Whoever it is calling the shots by the time the window opens, we just hope they've got a robust plan in place with many targets and that they don't waste time in making their move.

Is seven new signings too much? Or not enough?

For our money, we need at least seven players in this summer and at least six out just to put us in good stead for the next season. Ideally, we'd like to see more coming in, but even seven sounds like a tall order.

With his vast Football Manager knowledge, surely Andy Howe will have identified the latest wonderkids for Newcastle to go after. That always works out in reality.

We dare say this is just the first of a few moves that will affect the recruitment team in the coming months as the club tries to deal with the gap left by Ashworth.