PAUL Mitchell has made his first significant move as Newcastle United sporting director, bringing in the highly-rated James Bunce, who will "help to drive an elite performance culture" on Tyneside.

Bunce, who has previously worked with Mitchell at Monaco, arrives at Newcastle as the club's new performance director.

Bunce, say the club, will provide "key support" to the performance, medical, sports science, nutrition and psychology teams at Newcastle, working with the men's first team, academy and the women's side. A priority for the new arrival will be ensuring Newcastle avoid a repeat of last season's injury crisis.

Having started out as a strength and conditioning coach at Southampton, Bunce has enjoyed a meteoric rise.

He worked his way up to become head of athletic development at St Mary's before joining the Premier League as head of elite performance. That was followed by a move to become US Soccer's first ever director of high performance. In 2021, he joined Monaco - and Mitchell - as director of performance.

He left Monaco at the end of last year and after Mitchell's appointment was confirmed, he swiftly swooped to bring Bunce to Tyneside.

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"I am proud and excited to join such an historic and ambitious club as its new performance director," said Bunce.

"Newcastle United and the city are going through an exciting time of growth and development and I cannot wait to start contributing to the club's future successes.

"My role will be to ensure that we push in every area of performance and medicine to optimise the health, fitness and wellbeing of players, ultimately ensuring they are available to perform at the highest level, week in week out."

Darren Eales, Newcastle United's CEO, said: "James is an accomplished and innovative performance director and we are delighted he has chosen to join us.

"He has dedicated his career to helping players to be at their optimum levels, bringing a range of departments and services together to provide the best possible foundations for elite performance.

"James will be of great support to the talented players and staff we already have in place, and his strong working relationship with Paul Mitchell will be an asset to us as we continue to strive to be best in class."

Bunce will work closely with Eddie Howe and has previously said: "My responsibility is to build an unbelievable relationship with the head coach. It was described by a previous coach as me and you can't be best friends but we can be like a married couple.

"That I have to sometimes say the bad news. My job is to sometimes sit down like a married couple and have a very difficult conversation. But we are having that conversation because we love each other and want to make this work."