Dan Ashworth never thought he would be a sporting director. In fact, it is not an exaggeration to say that Ashworth did not even know what the role was when West Brom chairman Jeremy Peace summoned the club's academy manager to offer him the job in 2007.
It was a very different era - there were only a handful of technical directors working in the Premier League at the time - and Ashworth never imagined that he would go on to become one of the most-respected figures in his field in the country.
Indeed, Ashworth was so unsure about position, initially, that he only agreed to do the job at West Brom until the end of the season before getting it in writing that he could return to his old post if it did not work out. Ashworth need not have worried.
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That conversation with Peace ended up changing the course of Ashworth's career and, following spells with the Baggies, the FA and Brighton, the 50-year-old will help shape this new era at Newcastle United.
Although Ashworth was happy at Brighton, the technical director felt this was a once in a lifetime opportunity to help rebuild Newcastle, a club he has long admired, after he was headhunted once again by recruitment firm Nolan Partners.
It is a move that has gone down well in football circles in this country as Mike Rigg, who worked alongside Ashworth as head of talent management at the FA, explained.
"It's a real statement of intent here," the former Man City technical director told ChronicleLive.
"Newcastle have not just gone for some glitzy, glamorous name from abroad that looks good; they've gone for someone with real substance. Dan will come in and go, 'We want real top standards here'.
"I haven't met anyone who doesn't get on with Dan. I don't know anyone that's got a bad word to say about him and that's because of his integrity and honesty."
Ashworth is currently on gardening leave after resigning from Brighton last week and Newcastle hope to strike an agreement to cut short his notice period so that he can start as soon as possible.
Clearly, there is a lot of work to do when it comes to the men's first team, the women's team, player recruitment, the academy, medical and sports science, and the loan department - and that is before you mention the revamp of the club's infrastructure.
Newcastle's owners have already carried out a full review of football operations, but Ashworth will also want to come to his own conclusions when he takes up the role.
Indeed, during his time at the FA, Ashworth patiently spent the first few months observing, to see what was working and what was needed, before overseeing a restructure and getting staff in place as he brought St George's Park to life and helped build a DNA.
Adrian Bevington, who got to know Ashworth as Club England managing director, said the 50-year-old is 'very astute at evaluating an environment'.
"Dan is very personable," Bevington told ChronicleLive. "He's got a great knowledge of the game but where I think his real skillset is, beyond the knowledge of the game, is his organisational skills.
"He builds structures and he builds networks, and he develops good relationships with the managers he works with as well. It's a really important part of the job but, often, one of the most challenging parts of that particular role is understanding where the clarity of role is."
What will help Ashworth and, indeed, Eddie Howe in that respect is that the pair already know each other well and both share similar views on a range of issues, from how the game should be played to the importance of the academy.
Ashworth previously stuck up a close relationship with Graham Potter at Brighton - the pair lived just a couple of minutes away from each other and regularly spent time together away from the training ground - and the technical director always knew where the line was.
For instance, as obvious as it sounds, Ashworth was fully aware that there was no point in signing a player Potter did not want when there have been plenty of executives in this country who have thought otherwise with their own managers.
It would be a waste of money, for one, and, according to former FA chief executive Martin Glenn, Ashworth will take ownership of every pound he spends at Newcastle.
"Dan is dead straight," Glenn told ChronicleLive. "He's careful about how he spends money. He's low ego. It's all about the results - not about him.
"He's a terrific character and finding people who are knowledgeable about football who can also spend money intelligently? There aren't many of them."
What also makes Ashworth a little different as a technical director is the fact he is as comfortable chatting to practitioners at the training ground in a club tracksuit as he is speaking to the hierarchy in a suit in the boardroom.
That is much-owed to Ashworth's grounding; the former defender was released by Norwich at age of 17 and went on to train and work as a teacher before cutting his teeth in youth football for 12 years.
Given that background, perhaps, it is not a surprise that Ashworth was keen to set aside investment for psychology and wellbeing support for players and staff at the FA and Brighton.
Ashworth has always operated an open door policy and Lee Darnbrough, who served as head of performance analysis and then head of technical recruitment at West Brom, said that 'when Dan gave you the time, you had his attention'.
"Dan had this ability to connect with people," Darnbrough told ChronicleLive. "You're willing to go that extra mile for him due to the way he's operated with you as a person.
"He had a real good skill of working between [owner] Jeremy Peace and [chief executive] Mark Jenkins and that role between those guys and the various head coaches we had at the time.
"That's a unique position to actually translate ownership messages through on the difficult issues around even things like budget planning and what the coaches can and can't spend. He could work a room really well."
Although Ashworth has always overseen each of his individual departments, the technical director has been keen to give his colleagues the freedom to help shape them.
For example, one of the challenges Ashworth has often set his staff at the end of the season is how they would spend a budget to see how they would better the department.
This collaborative approach was all the more crucial at West Brom, where every penny counted under frugal owner Jeremy Peace, and Ashworth had a knack of knowing when to push and fight for investment.
Stuart White, who served as head of UK recruitment at West Brom, said that it was 'only when Dan has gone do you realise, definitively, just how good he is' in that regard.
"In trusting myself and others in the recruitment department to get on with things, Dan also took a lot of the political flak," White told ChronicleLive.
"We weren't exposed to it. He took it all on board and managed it and only when we needed to be aware of certain things were we made aware of them.
"Having been around football clubs full-time for 12 years in total, you realise there's a hell of a lot of political goings on.
"But, at West Brom, in those four years that I worked directly with Dan, I was never really perturbed by any of it. It all got soaked up, managed and handled by him."
Given West Brom's tight budget, Ashworth had to be creative with signings and central to that was the Shire, the Lord of the Rings inspired facility at the club's training ground.
It was in this very room that any game broadcast in the world could be recorded onto a DVD so that a library of footage could be built on players before Ashworth and his army of scouts then watched their targets in person. It was the Wyscout of its time.
Among those who beeped on Ashworth's radar was defender Jonas Olsson, who proved a snip at £800,000 in 2008.
The Swede ended up staying at the club for nine years and that was thanks, in no small part, to Ashworth - even after the technical director had moved on.
"Dan was very good at creating an environment in the club where you were happy and satisfied with daily life there," he told ChronicleLive.
"He had a plan in keeping the key players and trying to work with a long-term perspective, which is quite rare in football today.
"It felt like he was always trying to be one step ahead to replace your big players before they had left. That was his best trait."
Before Ashworth even considers new signings, however, he will consult his depth chart of first-team players, loans, under-23s and under-18s and that is thanks in no small part to his academy background.
When it comes to youth development, well, Ashworth did everything from washing the kit and driving the mini bus to running the under-eights development centres and coaching the reserves during spells at Peterborough United, Cambridge United and West Brom.
Ashworth, as a result, will be just as knowledgeable about a 16-year-old left-back currently on Newcastle's books as he will be about their top summer target.
Given how Ashworth has based himself on site at the training ground at all the organisations he has worked at, that should not come as a shock as former West Brom midfielder Paul Scharner explained.
"Dan was always around," Scharner told ChronicleLive. "He had an open door for any players, any staff. He's a very common lad. That's different to many technical directors. He's still Dan Ashworth, a human being."
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