James Fowler set to join Newcastle United - Report

Newcastle United are building up its scouting network to find the best young players out there for the academy.

Finding young players to develop into future stars has been the ethos at the club since the PIF took over, and while there has been mixed success with it so far, the journey continues.

Under Ross Wilson, things appear to be moving in the right direction. We've already seen that the South American scouting operation is working well, and while so far we've only actually snatched up Johan Martinez, we are being linked with new players regularly.

Scott Mitchell is set to join Newcastle from Oxford as a youth scout reporting into Paul Midgley, but he's not the only one.

Fowler set for Newcastle United role

According to Craig Hope in his latest Newcastle Confidential column for the Daily Mail, former Sunderland assistant boss James Fowler is also on his way back to the north east.

Fowler is currently at Rangers as their head of academy scouting, but he will join Newcastle as scouting operations manager, reporting to Paul Midgley.

The 45-year-old will be in charge of European scouting for the academy, continuing our behind-the-scenes revamp heading into the summer. 

Signing young talent is only the start

Newcastle is really pushing hard to ensure they are in pole position to secure the world's brightest talent going forward.

It's all well and good bringing these players in, but it's what we do with them when they arrive that needs a lot of work, in our opinion, whether that's loan moves or the pathway to first team.

Our loans department hasn't exactly got a great track record of finding good moves for our young stars to develop. Trevan Sanusi is coming back from France, having not played a single minute of Ligue 1 football. Antonio Cordero had his Belgian loan terminated midway through before returning to the Spanish second division.

We will always point to Garang Kuol's disaster loans at Hearts and FC Volendam as bad examples, too. Only Yankuba Minteh's loan could be really deemed a success, and that was so good we sold him before he made a first-team appearance for the club.

Closer to home, our Under 21s have massively improved their results under Robbie Stockdale after Adam Lawrence's departure in January, so we could be starting to get more out of our players who aren't sent out on loan at least.

There is a feeling amongst fans that Eddie Howe doesn't offer enough opportunities to young players. There's certainly an element of truth to that, but we don't see what he does on a daily basis.

Hopefully, this summer and 2026/27 include the emergence of another Lewis Miley, and fewer hopeless loans that only set back a youngster's career.