Arsenal’s hunt for a sporting director has led to them being linked with a possible move for Dan Ashworth to replace Edu Gaspar.
Edu left Arsenal in early November, with the former player-turned-director deciding that a new challenge was needed in his career.
With a vacancy open at the Emirates Stadium, there have been plenty of links surrounding possible names that could take up the position.
One of those is Dan Ashworth, who left Manchester United in early December after just five months in his role at Old Trafford.
The Englishman has been highly rated for his time in the game, with spells at West Brom, the English FA, Brighton and Newcastle.
With his sudden availability, recent reports have stated that Arsenal are interested in Dan Ashworth for the sporting director role.
As such links have appeared, Arsenal Insider has a bit of insight into the man behind some of the biggest jobs in English football and what he may bring to the club.
Dan Ashworth’s career path
Ashworth’s career in football truly started at West Brom in 2004, when he was brought in by Aidy Boothroyd to help with the academy setup.
In three years at the club, he was promoted to the role of technical director in 2007, where he was in charge of implementing processes to help with the scouting network and overall recruitment drive at all levels from first-team to youth level.
That got him a spot at the English FA, where he was the director of elite development, looking to implement what is now known as the “England DNA” model.
Speaking to Arsenal Insider, West Brom expert and former Birmingham Mail writer Chris Lepkowski discussed the career progression of the director from his days with the Baggies.
“I think it was always inevitable he would be head-hunted because that role was evolving,” he said on Ashworth’s progression to the top.
“It was becoming more and more popular. I think it was the fact he went to the FA that was surprising because you kind of assume with his specialities and his strengths, he’d end up at a big club.
“Obviously he went there to head up the youth development, he was drawing on some of the experiences he had in the Albion academy and Albion youth system as well.”
In 2018, he left the FA and went on to join Brighton, where the side’s rise to the top with impressive players from relatively obscure clubs in the world helped gain him and the club some notoriety and an impressive reputation.
Fast forward four years and the director was head-hunted by Newcastle to help build a squad capable of competing at the top under their PIF-backed ownership.
That didn’t last long though as Manchester United came knocking, though his switch there didn’t last too long either.
In his vast experience, there have been a number of different transfer stories regarding Ashworth, including an interesting one for Arsenal and Manchester United.
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Dan Ashworth’s Claudio Yacob transfer story
One story that perhaps shows how dedicated Dan Ashworth is to the job of sporting director comes from his days at West Brom.
It involves both Arsenal and Manchester United – which may be ironic should he join the former and show the latter what they missed out on.
In 2012, a highly-rated Argentinian prospect by the name of Claudio Yacob was on the radar of the Gunners and the Red Devils.
Having already featured heavily in league football and approaching the final few months of his contract, there was an opportunity to land a free transfer.
Instead of the allure of the Emirates Stadium or Old Trafford, he chose the Hawthorns as a dedicated Ashworth threw everything at getting a deal done.
While reports claimed that he had even climbed a fence to watch the midfielder play, the truth is a little different but still remarkable.
On the transfer saga, Lepkowski revealed: “He very much built up that scouting and recruitment network and I think maybe the most famous player that is symbolic of Dan Ashworth’s influence was Claudio Yacob.
“Now Claudio was being watched by Arsenal, Manchester United had looked at him, and Albion really, really kept him under the radar.
“I knew he had a growing reputation in Argentina, he was playing for Racing at the time and Dan actually, it wasn’t Dan who identified Yacob, but what Dan did, he famously went to Argentina and effectively invited himself to the Yacob household and stayed there until the deal was done.
“Because he knew that it was this guy on a Bosman free transfer, he’d been capped by Argentina twice, he knew it would be a major coup for West Brom.
“Yacob may not have been the player that Arsenal or Man United could get a lot out of, but he was a tremendous signing for West Brom and I think that’s the one that maybe epitomised just how successful Dan’s time was as head of player recruitment as it was.”
It shows the lengths to which Ashworth has been willing to go to secure the right signing at the right time for his club.
Whether that will come as a bonus to Arsenal in the future remains to be seen, but it could certainly be a loss to Man United.
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