Newcastle United appoint ‘performance director’ to work with Eddie Howe: View

Newcastle United’s incoming sporting director Paul Mitchell has swiftly made a new appointment at St James’ Park after appointing James Bunce as performance guru.

Bunce worked with Mitchell at Monaco and will assume the role as performance director working with Eddie Howe and the backroom staff. The Magpies returned to pre-season training on Thursday with the club posting a picture of Howe with a caption of “the boss” on their X account.

At Moncao, Bunce’s focus was on injury prevention and risk reduction, monitoring physical preparation, performance, medical, nutritional and psychological aspects. Mitchell has previously said about Bunce: “James is an individual who has established himself in recent years as a benchmark in the field of high performance.

“Through James’ arrival (at Moncao), the aim is to give our organisation the intelligence and expertise to grow to challenge the world’s elite in athletic performance. We want to provide the necessary conditions to perform on and off the field using the latest technologies and practices of high level sport.

“All this work will allow us to optimize the sporting training and physical ability of the players to meet the ever-increasing demands of the game.”

Bunce has previously spoken of his relationship with the head coach as being like “a marriage” and stated in an interview he may have to have uncomfortable conversations with the manager.

Bunce said: “My responsibility is to build an unbelievable relationship with the head coach. It was described by a previous coach as me and you can’t be best friends but we can be like a married couple.

“That I have to sometimes say the bad news. My job is to sometimes sit down like a married couple and have a very difficult conversation. But we are having that conversation because we love each other and want to make this work.”