PAUL Mitchell believes the arrival of James Bunce will help to prevent a repeat of the injury issues that plagued Newcastle United last season - with Eddie Howe desperate to get to the bottom of the problem and ensure he's not left short again in the coming campaign.

Howe had to deal with an unprecedented injury crisis last season, with stars including Joelinton, Alexander Isak, Nick Pope, Kieran Trippier, Sven Botman, Joe Willock and Callum Wilson all facing spells on the sidelines.

Such was the scale of the problem, at times Howe was forced to fill his bench with youngsters and more than one goalkeeper, with the issues undoubtedly a major contributing factor as the Magpies came up short in their bid to secure European football.

While United were no doubt desperately unfortunate, long before the end of last season Howe and his coaching team acknowledged the importance of doing everything possible this summer to ensure the Magpies don't face a repeat this term.

READ MORE:

And the arrival of Bunce will be key.

He joined last week as performance director, following Mitchell through the door at St James' Park with the pair having previously worked together at Monaco.

When Mitchell first joined Monaco, the Ligue 1 club were in the midst of their own injury crisis and Bunce came to their rescue - so Mitchell has first hand experience of the pedigree of his new recruit.

"Something that has been well documented is the injury prevention and rehabilitation," said Mitchell, who travelled to adidas HQ in Germany with Newcastle's coaching staff and squad for the first pre-season camp of the summer this week.

"It's something that Eddie wanted to address and the organisation and ownership wanted to address.

"My job is to go and find the best in class. I was fortunate to work with James previously. We came together via an unfortunate situation that looked like this one: I had a big injury list when I arrived in Monaco, 20 players injured, a lack of availability to the coach.

"We need to put that right. If we're going to move to the next level and perform at that level consistently, we need to give our best players accessibility to the coach and vice-versa. The way we do that is keeping them fit, healthy and robust so our coach has a better chance of winning.

"That's why we hired someone like James who is an elite specialist in the world of performance."

Mitchell is a couple of weeks into his work at Newcastle after arriving to replace Dan Ashworth and is excited about the future on Tyneside.

He said: "This role poses wonderful and beautiful challenges every day.

"Recruitment is a big driver of that, my background in scouting and recruitment is well documented, but there's more: there's performance, analysis, physio, medical, academy, development, the growth of the women's game.

"It's an exciting role, it's a great job, it's 360 across all areas and that keeps me busy and stimulated every day."