Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s brutal answer on why Dan Ashworth failed after leaving Newcastle United..
Dan Ashworth has endured a difficult time of things after leaving Newcastle United.
Ashworth was appointed as Newcastle United’s first sporting director of the PIF era back in 2022 but, around two years later, was placed on gardening leave amid interest from Manchester United.
Such was the level of their interest in him, Man United paid around £5million to appoint Ashworth at Old Trafford as part-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe looked to rebuild the Red Devils.
Ashworth left Man United back in December after only a few months in the post. Given the amount of money they paid to appoint him in the first place, that was an embarrassing turn of events for the Manchester giants.
Clearly, the 53-year-old is rated highly. Arsenal were linked with Ashworth, after all, and it remains to be seen if the events of the last few months will have any impact on his career.
Quite why he left Old Trafford, however, remains a mystery.
Photo by Valerio Pennicino – UEFA/UEFA via Getty Images
Photo by Valerio Pennicino – UEFA/UEFA via Getty Images..
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Sir Jim Ratcliffe issues brutal response to Dan Ashworth question after Newcastle United exit
Conducting an interview with Gary Neville recently, the INEOS owner was quizzed on a number of subjects regarding the Manchester club given their current state.
Naturally, Ashworth’s brief tenure was one of them.
While he did not wish to go into any specific details, Ratcliffe explained that Ashworth’s exit was down to “chemistry”, issuing a fairly brutal and blunt response to Neville’s question.
“End of the day it was just chemistry,” he said.
“Maybe a bit more than chemistry but it didn’t work out. We decided we would make a change, we could have lived with it due to scrutiny in the media we knew we would get, but I wasn’t prepared to live with it.”
Indeed, quite what that means is up for debate…
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Paul Mitchell was brought in as the replacement for Ashworth and it remains to be seen if that has been an upgrade.
After just one transfer window – one impacted by PSR restrictions – it’s impossible to say if the former Tottenham and Monaco supremo has been a success.
Still, Newcastle’s owners feel Mitchell is an upgrade on Ashworth. Having finally sold some players in January, it does look as if that may prove to be true.
Time will tell but Newcastle do not appear to have felt Ashworth’s exit all too much.
