This week Newcastle finally let Dan Ashworth take up his new role at Manchester United. It initially felt like it was a last-ditch effort by Newcastle to comply with PSR given the timing, but it turned out the Magpies had an ulterior motive.
On Thursday morning the club announced that they had signed Paul Mitchell as Sporting Director to replace Dan Ashworth which was celebrated by many Newcastle fans as it felt like the club had actually bagged their first choice after a long hunt which originally saw the club set to miss out on Mitchell's appointment.
Mitchell's role at the club will be different to that of Dan Ashworth with the former Southampton, Tottenham, RB Leipzig and Monaco man to be more focused on transfers than day-to-day club operations.
Paul Mitchell aka Smugly Smuggerson Newcastle received PS10million in compensation for Dan Ashworth Before Mitchell's appointment, the big talking point around Newcastle was the amount Newcastle and Man United eventually settled on to allow Ashworth to move with Man United fans adamant that they only paid the PS2million they had offered and Newcastle fans saying that they paid more like PS15million.
We now have an answer to that question with inews reporting that the compensation package agreed was PS10million which still feels like a pretty significant win for the Magpies. Ashworth breaks his own record of being the most expensive non-player transfer yet again after Newcastle paid around PS3million to Brighton two years ago.
Regardless of which set of fans feel like they won the compensation wars, it would take some convincing debate to persuade Newcastle fans that they didn't get the best overall deal.
Mitchell had already rejected Manchester United Paul Mitchell's pedigree is phenomenal, so good in fact that Manchester United wanted him to work alongside Ashworth but Mitchell told INEOS that he wasn't interested in a role at Old Trafford.
That means, not only did Newcastle get PS10million from Man United, they deprived them of their first-choice head of recruitment by landing the man top of their own list.
How can anyone not declare that a huge win for Newcastle?