'Really demanding' - Paul Mitchell's biggest move at Newcastle as 'great addition' secured
It was a comment that went a little under the radar. However, following an unsettling period, and the most difficult summer of his career, Eddie Howe made a point last week of praising James Bunce, who has been 'hugely impressive' since his appointment a couple of months ago. The suited performance director was even beckoned into the dressing room photograph after Newcastle United's win against Wolves a couple of days later. "He's been a great addition to the team," Howe told reporters.
Those who worked closely with Bunce at Monaco felt similarly. Before a summer of change at Monaco, in 2020, when Bunce, sporting director Paul Mitchell and new manager Niko Kovac all arrived, the Ligue 1 side ranked 76th for total distance covered, 85th for high-speed running and 88th for accelerations in Europe's top five leagues. Within a couple of seasons, the Principality soared to third for sprint distance, high-speed running and total distance covered. Player availability even increased to 90% after Mitchell inherited a 'big injury list with 20 players unavailable every weekend'.
There were one or two parallels when Mitchell became Newcastle's new sporting director back in July although intensity was certainly not an issue. According to Opta, only three Premier League teams had a better PPDA than Newcastle (10.7) last season.
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However, having placed in third and fifth for pressed sequences and high turnovers in 2022-23, the Magpies fell to 13th and eighth respectively last year. Those figures reflected the demands of fighting on four fronts with fatigued players during a testing campaign where Newcastle lost more days (1,950) to injury than any other side in the Premier League and player availability dropped to 55% at one point.
Newcastle may have fewer games this season, but no one wanted a repeat of that campaign. So could Bunce help? Well, few are better placed to comment than Yann Le Meur, who worked alongside Bunce as Monaco's head of athletic development, before succeeding the Englishman as the club's performance director.
"James is really clear about the load, the standards that need to be secure to fix this kind of problem," he told ChronicleLive. "For sure, we have to stay humble when it's about injuries. Some of them are difficult to prevent, but a lot can be done with muscle injuries if you work effectively and correctly in the gym and on the pitch. He demonstrated he can have a good impact in this area. I'm sure he can be a great help."
Newcastle suffered a number of freak injuries last season, but Howe was the first to recognise that some lay-offs had come from 'too much load or maybe our programmes were not good enough in the gym'. "If we are sitting here going we have not made any mistakes, I think we are being fools," the Newcastle boss previously admitted.
Bunce, who has also worked at the U.S. Soccer Federation, the Premier League and Southampton, has since looked at what happened last season. The performance director is 'untuning every stone' to: optimise the recovery of players, make sure their load is being managed and ensure those coming back from lay-offs are carefully reintegrated.
Bunce, in his own words, acts as the conductor of the orchestra - bringing together the major disciplines of performance and sports science, medical, nutrition and psychology across the men's, women's and academy teams - in order to provide the best support to players and staff and to optimise recovery, physical development and medical care.
An ever-present on the sidelines at Benton, Bunce is involved from the very start of the planning phase of first-team training and gives the coaching staff detailed analysis after the sessions, which has been welcomed by Howe. This is a figure, according to Le Meur, who is focused on 'nailing the basics' and building 'something that is sustainable' for the years to come.
"James is really demanding regarding the level of consistency he expects from the staff," the Monaco performance director added. "He leads by example. He's a hard worker. He spends a lot of time at the club and pays a lot of attention to detail. He stays very close to the pitch and the gym to see how you train and the exercises which are completed by the players in the gym as well as the atmosphere and the mindset.
"He's really organised. He's really good at implementing tools and processes in the daily routine, which are going to make the communication smoother with the staff and the players to ensure each staff member has the information he needs to do his job. You have more and more people around the players today, which is a good thing, because you can bring more expertise, but it's also more challenging because you have to make sure that people are aligned regarding the way to work and to make sure they have the right information at the right time.
"It can be challenging to achieve this when you have 20 people in a performance department and you have to align with the technical staff, but one of the strengths of James is his capacity to establish routines and daily meetings to start the day, end the day, plan the next day, plan the next week and plan the next training block, and to make sure the plan is really clear for everyone because the daily life in a football club is like a washing machine. You always have to anticipate what's going to happen next."