Newcastle United have joined Everton in the pursuit of Steve Hitchen after he decided to leave his post as Tottenham Hotspur’s technical director.
The Telegraph report that Hitchen has formally resigned and left Tottenham after five years with the club.
Hitchen started out as a scout at Tottenham before heading on to Liverpool, Queens Park Rangers and Derby County, returning to Spurs in 2017.
The 45-year-old, who had a long playing career with Macclesfield Town, is already a man in demand mere hours after leaving Tottenham.
The Telegraph’s report states that Everton are leading the race for Hitchen, but Newcastle United are interested too.
PIF have been looking to appoint a new director of football at Newcastle ever since their takeover in October, but have so far come up short.
The Mirror report that Newcastle expect to have a new director of football on board within weeks and HItchen is now a contender.
Newcastle managed to get through the January window without a director of football, but they will absolutely need one moving forward.
That report added some interesting lines about who Hitchen wanted to sign for Tottenham but couldn’t.
It was suggested that Hitchen identified key signings for Tottenham but Daniel Levy just couldn’t fund the deals.
Hitchen wanted to sign Jack Grealish from Aston Villa, Bruno Fernandes from Sporting, Paulo Dybala from Juventus and James Ward-Prowse from Southampton.
Sadly, none of them ended up at Tottenham. In the cases of Grealish and Fernandes, they ended up making huge moves to Manchester.
With a diminishing role at Tottenham due to Fabio Paratici’s arrival, Hitchen may now look to take full control at another club.
Newcastle would at least have the funds to back some of Hitchen’s big moves, which were seemingly beyond Tottenham at the time.
Those are four impressive targets, and Newcastle may now go for Hitchen in the hope of him targeting similar quality players for them.
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