Newcastle sporting director Paul Mitchell spells out exactly what his role at the club will be

Newcastle United's new sporting director Paul Mitchell has sat down with NUFC TV for his first interview since joining the club.

After leaving his role as sporting director at Monaco, Paul Mitchell has been in high demand, and even alluded to having plenty of offers in his interview, without naming any names.

But it was Newcastle United that ticked all the boxes he was looking for in his next role.

As a northerner, Paul Mitchell says he understands the passion of the Newcastle fans, he knows what the club is about and he's watched their growth since the takeover and wants to be a part of it.

Paul Mitchell is involved in a lot more than just recruitment

That's great, Paul, but what is it you actually do? There is a lot of confusion about Mitchell's role, especially as he holds the same job title as Dan Ashworth who had installed himself as some sort of NUFC Overlord. The rumour was that Mitchell would just be focused on recruitment with several other roles having been created to lead separate departments in the wake of Ashworth's departure.

However, it does sound like Mitchell will still have plenty of input into all facets of the club, just perhaps not at the same level as Dan the man's head.

"I think people are still a little bit in the dark over what the role entails. I oversee all of our sporting investments. I oversee, obviously the men's team, the academy and the women's team. That does pose beautiful, wonderful challenges every day.

"Recruitment is a big driver of that. My background in scouting and recruitment is well documented, but there's more. There's more around performance, analysis, physio, medical, academy, player development, the growth of the women's game. So, it's an exciting role, it's a great job. It's 360 across all areas of football and that keeps me busy and stimulated every day."

James Bunce has come in to solve the injury crisis at the club

So it does look like Mitchell will be an overseer, but unlike Ashworth, he has many department heads underneath him, for example, the newest recruit, James Bunce who followed Mitchell from Monaco to help alleviate the injury issues that plagued Newcastle last season.

"Something that has been well documented is around that injury prevention that rehabilitation and the amount of injuries and the amount of minutes participated by the first team, and it's something I think eddie wanted to address and the organisation and ownership wanted to address.

"My job is to go and find the best in class. I was fortunate to work with James previously, but we came across each other through an unfortunate situation that looked like this one. I had a big injury list when I landed in Monaco. 20 players injured every weekend, a lack of availability to the coach and we need to put that right."

Fingers crossed Bunce came with a magic wand so that he can fix all of those issues before next season gets underway.