'Flying out to Brazil' - Newcastle may have found transfer chief to work with Dan Ashworth

It was not so long ago that Lee Charnley, Steve Nickson and Steve Bruce were sitting around the table preparing for what proved to be the final window of the Ashley era. A lot has changed at Newcastle United since then.

However, while several influential figures have moved on, or been moved on, following the club's takeover last October, tellingly, Nickson has survived. Newcastle's head of recruitment has impressed the club's new owners in recent months with his knowledge, attention to detail and work ethic, and Amanda Staveley has even said that 'we really rate him'.

Nickson, after all, played an influential role alongside Eddie Howe, Jason Tindall and the club's hierarchy in the build-up to January and during the mid-season window itself. Just as Howe identified targets, Nickson and his recruitment team also provided names and data, which the Newcastle head coach then sifted through to decide who was worth pursuing.

Given the hours Howe was already spending working on the training pitches, the fate of these pursuits would then be left in the hands of others, who would keep the head coach up to date late at night. It was Nickson, for example, who physically flew out to Belo Horizonte with club doctor Paul Catterson to finalise the Bruno Guimaraes deal.

Howe was kept informed throughout as contracts were signed and the midfielder's medical took place, and it was certainly not the first time that Nickson had travelled to the other side of the world on club business. While Eric Kinder described his former Blackburn Rovers colleague as 'one of the funniest people you could ever wish to meet', Nickson was always a 'different animal' when it came to work.

"When I try to ring him these days, he's never in the country,"