Brighton’s Dan Ashworth coup shows a different footballing commodity worth fighting for

Chief executives and technical directors are increasingly part of the fabric of modern football, valuable commodities to be pursued, a whole new space where the game can be won and lost

The news that Dan Ashworth will swap the Football Association for Brighton & Hove Albion in January raised a few eyebrows this week. Much like Jorginho’s summer transfer to Chelsea, or Alisson’s record-switch to Liverpool, few people had actually seen Ashworth in action – sending emails, brainstorming, implementing long-term strategic thinking – yet there was a football-wide feeling that this meant something significant.

Success on and off the pitch has followed Ashworth wherever he goes – concerningly for the FA, things also tend to go downhill once he’s gone – and there’s no doubt he would have been a major coup for any of the Premier League’s top clubs. Speaking ahead of Brighton’s trip to the champions Manchester City on Saturday, the manager Chris Hughton described their new signing as “an excellent acquisition”.

“I think he’s been brought in at a time when the club have made big strides over the last few years; promotion to the Premier League, the academy doing well, the ladies’ team now playing in the top division, a growing medical department,” said Hughton. “They are the quite obvious reasons why the club felt they needed to bring somebody in.

“Dan’s somebody I’ve known for a long time and certainly you want somebody with the experience that Dan has. As regards the candidates, they probably at this moment don’t come any higher than Dan and he has a very, very good CV. I think it’s a great acquisition for the club, we are certainly delighted and look forward to him starting.”

Ivan Gazidis oversaw the appointment of Unai Emery at Arsenal (Getty) (Arsenal FC via Getty)

Chief executives and technical directors are increasingly part of the fabric of modern football, valuable commodities to be pursued, fought over, a whole new frontier where the game can be won and lost. Ivan Gazidis’s announced move from Arsenal to become AC Milan’s chief executive last week came under more scrutiny than most of the Gunners’ summer transfer policy; we live in a time when Manchester United’s executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward is more recognisable than their new £20m right-back Diogo Dalot.

This is the inevitable result of football’s commercial bloat but it is also a lurch towards a more forensic approach to the game, and few clubs in English football embody that trend better than Brighton. The club’s detailed recruitment, headed up by the self-dubbed “obsessive” Paul Winstanley, is highly regarded across Europe and drew the club to identify players like Pascal Gross, a midfielder making a statistical imprint on the Bundesliga whose numbers translated to points in the Premier League last season and effectively steered the club from relegation.

Ashworth’s remit is to take charge of just about every aspect of the club which is not related to the first team, and the hope is that his influence on non-football matters will eventually filter down to the pitch. He will chair regular meetings of the club’s technical board, attended by heads of the academy, medical department and recruitment as well as Hughton himself, and will be tasked in the long term with helping Brighton establish themselves in the top flight, as he did at West Brom.

Brighton continued their careful movements in the transfer market this summer, bringing in £60m of relatively young and unheralded talent from foreign markets, which Hughton is slowly introducing to the Premier League, and Ashworth will now play a key role in how recruitment is shaped going forwards. Yet in the face of all that investment, it is a sign of the times that the new technical director might turn out to be their most significant signing yet.