Newcastle will resist any moves from Man United for 'ideal' man as new stakeholder is a huge fan

Sir Jim Ratcliffe is set to buy a 25% stake in Manchester United and will also be given the reins to run the football club.

While it's hardly the £7billion takeover they were hoping for, the fact that Sir Jim Ratcliffe will be put in charge of footballing affairs should be seen as good news for Manchester United fans as they finally get out from underneath the Glazers.

One issue from a Newcastle United perspective is that Sir Jim is a huge fan of Newcastle's sporting director, Dan Ashworth and may try to tempt the former Brighton man to the dark side, I mean Old Trafford.

A report in inews has said that Newcastle will flat-out resist any move for Ashworth as he's a key man behind the scenes at the club, being hailed as the 'ideal' person for the job when he joined last year.

It's also believed that Ashworth himself will have no desire to leave Newcastle so early into the project that he is heading up.

Ashworth joined Newcastle in July last year and it's his mission to ensure the club functions the same at every level in order to make it easy for the young talent to grow into first-team players without ever feeling like they're out of place.

As well as this Ashworth is responsible for unearthing new talent from around the world and bringing them to Newcastle. Something he's made a fantastic start doing bringing in the likes of Garang Kuol (who is struggling a bit to be fair), Harrison Ashby, Alex Murphy and Yankuba Minteh who are all knocking on the first-team door already.

Should Ratcliffe's buy-in go through, which it's believed it will, he will have to look elsewhere for a sporting director because he's certainly not taking Wor Dan.