'Great addition' - Eddie Howe has approved Paul Mitchell's first Newcastle United move

After being appointed sporting director in early-July, one of Paul Mitchell’s first moves was to bring in Bunce as performance director. The pair previously worked closely together French club Monaco.

Bunce is responsible for supporting the “club's performance, medical, sports science, nutrition and psychology teams”, while helping to drive “an elite performance culture and cohesive approach” across the men's and women’s team, and academy.

And Howe admits he has been extremely impressed with Bunce’s work so far. He said: “James is working really well I have to say, he’s been hugely impressive since he’s come in.

“He’s very passionate, hardworking and involved from the very start of the planning phase of training to the execution, and gives us really detailed analysis after as well so I think he’s been a great addition to the team.”

Mitchell spoke to journalists last week and said Howe had been “super receptive” to Bunce’s arrival.

A big part of his role his injury prevention and increasing player availability, something Howe & Co really struggled to do last season as a result of the hectic schedule.

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"James is on the grass every single day with Eddie,” Mitchell said. “Not in a participation but from a perspective of support and they have regular dialogue pre and post training, so from my perspective, adding a real high level member of the team in, Eddie has been super receptive.

"I would like to believe that someone as smart and intelligent as Eddie Howe would recognise quality wherever it came from and I think that James is a good example of that and we need to keep building that within our infrastructure, and that goes for scouting as well.

"This is a smart organisation, and I think when you do the analysis it's not hard to find and say that injury really had a contributing factor to our performances, it does with everyone's.

"So I think, looking at that, coming out and understanding objectively that we did have that severity of injuries and not wanting to have that again, was there a clear defined role we needed to implement within a modern structure if we want to keep moving forward in a modern way? 100%.

"Eddie did a really good job, but a lack of squad availability definitely impacts every coach. If you don't have your best players, you're not going to be at your optimum. So there was an area there that I think everyone from Eddie to the ownership to Darren (Eales) agreed we need to get better in this context, because when we arrive in a three game schedule week again, we need to make sure our players are resilient athletes that can perform every couple of days.

“I think there was definitely an aligned view that this is crucial to make sure we learn lessons from the past, to make sure we don't have that again. And I think that really excites us this year.

“If we can keep the players fit, keep the players focused, keep the players resilient, we have got a really good team. We won't need to rotate as much as others because we're not in that really difficult [fixture] cycle to manage."