Dan Ashworth's back garden has never looked so good. The man who will help shape Newcastle United's new era is currently still serving an extended period of garden leave after resigning from his role as technical director at Brighton last month.
Newcastle remain hopeful of reaching an agreement to end Ashworth's notice period before the end of the year, but Brighton are understandably not in a rush to go out of their way to help a side who look set to leapfrog the Seagulls in the table in the future. While there is a lot of good will towards Ashworth from the powers at be at Brighton, who, tellingly, gave the 51-year-old the chance to personally say goodbye to players and staff, they are also well-aware of his worth.
Newcastle's owners at least know they have secured the services of the man who will create a structure and establish an overarching philosophy in the coming years as the club's new sporting director. There is a sense of calm surrounding the situation and, in Eddie Howe's own words, Newcastle are 'working as we were' until Ashworth arrives.
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On that point, regardless of when Ashworth starts, it is important to stress that it could well be a number of years before the 51-year-old's true impact is felt. This is very much an appointment for the medium and long-term and when Ashworth does eventually take over, the new arrival will want to observe and evaluate in his first few months in the post before making any structural changes.
Mike Rigg, who worked with Ashworth as the FA's head of talent management, has spoken to his friend a lot about 'building and fixing' over the years after fulfilling a similar role, himself, at Man City in the early stages of the Sheikh Mansour era. A position like this brings an increased level of exposure, of course, but do not expect Ashworth to change how he operates at Newcastle.
"With Dan, what you see is what you get," Rigg told ChronicleLive. "I can't imagine he's going to be one of these people who's going to be on the back of the Chronicle every night and on Sky Sports. He's not.
"He's very much an unassuming, humble, hard-working person and he will get his head down and do his job with great professionalism. He's not going to be one to be blowing his trumpet at every opportunity he gets because that's just not him."
While Ashworth was happy at Brighton and did not apply for the role at Newcastle - the 51-year-old was instead headhunted by recruitment firm Nolan Partners - it is easy to see why he could not turn down a once in a lifetime opportunity. This is not only a chance to oversee and rebuild the men's first team, the women's team, player recruitment, the academy, medical and sports science, and the loan department. There is also the small matter of, one day, potentially helping the club end its lengthy trophy drought.
However, as much as Ashworth will expect 'top standards' at Newcastle to realise that dream, the former teacher will be keen to make sure his colleagues have all the resources they need and that does not just come down to the amount of money an individual department is allocated in a budget. That is why there may yet be a seventh department added to Ashworth's brief at Newcastle: psychology and wellbeing.
At Brighton, for example, James Bell was appointed as head of psychology and wellbeing on Ashworth's watch while Cara Lea Moseley was named the club's first mental wellbeing manager during his time at the club, too. This is traditionally an under-resourced area in club football, but it is one close to Ashworth's heart after he was tasked with helping players and staff cope with the pressure of major tournaments during his time as the FA.
Applied psychologist Pippa George was appointed as the FA's head of people and team development by Ashworth and rather than being narrow-minded, as the association had been for so many years, the technical director was not afraid to look externally to bring St George's Park to life. Dave Reddin, who had been head of performance services for the British Olympic Association, and Owen Eastwood, a highly-rated performance coach who worked with the All Blacks, were among those who were brought in by Ashworth.
Perhaps, then, it was not a surprise that former FA chief executive Martin Glenn found Ashworth to be 'open-minded' and 'loved working with the guy' because 'having England be successful was the only thing he was bothered about'.
"There wasn't a lot of radical thinking to what Dan did," Glenn told ChronicleLive. "There was a lot of just old fashioned benchmarking. What can you learn from other people?
"You don't need to be a genius to work out how to equip a team to spend three weeks away in a foreign country and do better in a tournament than a lot of English teams have done. You look at what Germany have done and what other successful winners have done.
"It's not out-of-the-box thinking; it's thorough, detailed, A,B,C benchmark thinking and applying best practice. It's humility. It's actually saying, 'What might other people teach us?'"
Newcastle's owners already share the way of thinking. In fact, Amanda Staveley visited Man City's state-of-the-art Etihad Campus on a fact-finding mission just last month.
However, although Ashworth will eventually recommend recruiting some additional members of staff, the sporting director will be keen to work with influential figures already in situ at Newcastle. Indeed, head of recruitment Paul Winstanley and academy manager John Moorling were among those who stayed on after Ashworth was appointed at Brighton in 2019.
Ashworth already knows a number of individuals at Newcastle from the circuit, whether it is head coach Eddie Howe or head of recruitment Steve Nickson, but the 51-year-old will be keen to familiarise himself with staff at all levels, too. During Ashworth's time at West Brom, for instance, all of the club's scouts from across Europe were invited to an annual summit. These talent spotters were taken to a game at the Hawthorns and put up in a hotel in an effort to recognise the work they did and to help them feel part of the club.
The scouts all arrived at the training ground at different times throughout the day, but Ashworth was keen to personally greet each one of them. While that may seem a small gesture to some, Stuart White, who was head of UK recruitment at West Brom, said it served as an example of why Ashworth was a 'very good people person'.
"Dan didn't just come in and hide away in his office and greet everybody in a larger room in the building altogether," White told ChronicleLive. "He got out of his car, went around the whole group individually and checked on everyone.
"It was just that little personal touch. We had people come in from Holland, France, Switzerland and Norway. If you've got that person coming to you, who is the boss, and spending minutes with you individually, it mattered.
"He made sure he did that but it wasn't ever a case of him ticking a particular box; he genuinely cared and wanted to know how people ticked and how they were getting on in their country."
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