New CEO, Darren Eales officially started work this week and has sat down to talk to NUFC TV about his role and the future of the club.
Darren Eales was recently appointed the club’s Chief Executive Officer tasked with outlining the strategy to take Newcastle into the upper echelons of the game. He arrived with a stacked CV that included spells at West Bromwich Albion and Tottenham Hotspur before heading over to America to set up Atlanta United from scratch, turning them into one of the biggest clubs in the MLS with match-day attendances that rival the Premier League.
One of Eales’ main tasks will be to grow the club’s commercial revenue. With the Financial Fair Play rules being strictly enforced on Newcastle, the club needs to make sure it is generating as much income as possible in order to finance the types of transfers that will take Newcastle to the next level.
However, Eales did confirm that he will be putting the fans at the heart of every decision to ensure that whatever they choose to do is right for the club from top to bottom. This was the approach that made Atlanta United such a success. In the two-year build-up before Atlanta was officially a club, Eales would meet with Premier League supporters groups around the area to see what they would want in a football club, taking that information on board and using it to make key decisions.
Eales confirmed that he had seen first-hand the change around the club since the takeover having visited when Atlanta sold Miguel Almiron to Newcastle under Mike Ashley, and then was again in attendance when Liverpool came to St James’ Park at the end of last season.
“One of the deciding factors for me in taking this role was I came over on a bit of a secret visit when we played Liverpool at the back end of last season. The last match I’d seen before that was in January 2019 when we were selling Miguel Almiron to Newcastle United in the previous ownership, and to see the difference in terms of, not only the energy in the stadium, so you know, big shout out to Wor Flags and what they’ve done with the flags in the stadium because that Liverpool game just sort of took my breath away in terms of the atmosphere. When you compare that to what it was like sort of three years previous, and even around the city, just in general.”
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