West Ham has this afternoon confirmed the appointment of Rob Newman as the Club’s new Head of Recruitment.
The 57 year old joins from Premier League champions Manchester City, where he spent more than 12 years as an International Scouting and Recruitment Manager. He played a key role in managing the team of City’s scouts scouring the globe for the best talent available and will now bring his experience and expertise to London Stadium, as part of a restructuring of the Club’s football recruitment department.
Commenting upon his new role, Newman said: “I’m really pleased to be here and coming in at a great time, especially after what’s been a fantastic start for the Club this season.In the last window alone, West Ham brought in four international players, coming to the Club because they’ve seen how well everything is going. They’ve seen what a great Club it is and what an even greater Club it could become. Hopefully I can be part of that process now. I’m going to give it 100 per cent.”
He added: “The most important thing is you can’t just bring players in who you think “he’s a great player for that team, he’s automatically going to make us a great team.” That’s not how it works, because there are different players, different teams play different ways, different managers have different styles, so we’ve got to do it in a way that’s the best for West Ham United.
“Again, that’s down to the department’s due diligence on players not only on the pitch, but off the pitch as well. You have to bring [not only] good footballers in, but also good characters as well.”
Joint-Chairmen David Sullivan and David Gold added: “We would like to take this opportunity to welcome Rob to West Ham United and wish him every success in his new role, which leads the restructuring of our football recruitment and scouting department.
“As a Club, we have conducted a very thorough and comprehensive search for the person we all believed was right to lead in this vital role – someone we feel will fit in perfectly and shares our united vision to ensure we continue to build on the strong progress we have made.”
Manager David Moyes added: “I am delighted to welcome Rob to West Ham United and look forward to working closely with him as we continue to restructure and enhance our recruitment and scouting department.
“Rob has fantastic experience and a wonderful pedigree in the game. He has rightly earned a lot of recognition for his excellent work at Manchester City and we are very pleased that he has chosen to take up this exciting new challenge here at West Ham.We have made some good strides forward with our player recruitment process but we want to continue improving and getting better and Rob’s arrival will help us to achieve that.”
A versatile former defender who made more than 600 senior appearances for the likes of Bristol City, Norwich City and Southend United, Newman had spells managing the Shrimpers, Cambridge United and as an assistant at Bournemouth, before moving into the field of scouting and recruitment with Manchester City in December 2008.
Born in Bradford-on-Avon in December 1963, Newman joined his local club Bristol City as an apprentice in 1981 and went on to make almost 400 appearances for the Robins, leading them to promotion to the old division two in 1990, before moving to Norwich in the summer of 1991 for a fee of £600,000.
At Carrow Road, he enjoyed the most successful spell of his career, as a member of the team that finished a club record third in the inaugural Premier League campaign of 1992/93, before playing a part in the famous defeat of Bayern Munich in the UEFA Cup the following season.
After loan spells at Motherwell and Wigan, he joined Southend United in 1998 and made 72 appearances for our Essex neighbours, before returning to begin his managerial career at Roots Hall in 2001. A year in charge at Conference side Cambridge United followed, before he spent two years assisting Kevin Bond at Bournemouth. After leaving the Cherries in September 2008, he took up a scouting role at Manchester City three months later and has been a key figure at the Club as they established himself as one of European football’s superpowers.
Massive, absolutely massive. Rob Newman is a fantastic appointment, and for me, it seems a bit of a strange thing to be happening at this club, but we are morphing into a finely tuned football club where everything is heading in the right direction. I’ve never known such a period in all of my years as a supporter, where this club is being run as professionally as it is right now.
I’m not sure if it is true, but I did read that Rob Newman has been paying particular attention to the Academy, which I guess is being looked at from a ground-up perspective.
Moyse talked about fixing the infrastructure of the “Whole” club along with changing the culture and mentality of the players at this club…… I just didn’t realise that he would be able to do it this FAST.
Unbelievable ⚒️⚒️