Here's a tip for the next time Newcastle United ponder who to appoint as director of football.

Get someone who ticks all the boxes, rather than a guy who leaves every box unmarked.

Joe Kinnear was utterly unsuited to the role. Everyone apart from Mike Ashley knew it.

However, the idea of a DoF is not a bad one. Indeed, it’s something Newcastle arguably could do with.

Just someone who wasn’t Kinnear.

If the remit was simply to get deals over the line, then whoever Ashley looks to next wouldn’t necessarily need a football background.

Plenty of big clubs all over Europe have a deal-breaker whose sole purpose is to get who the manager wants.

And before we go on, signings should be the responsibility of Alan Pardew. Nobody else.

He can listen to the advice of Graham Carr, which he would be wise to do, and even discuss it with a DoF. But as it’s the manager who picks the team, decides on tactics and watches them every day in training, it’s madness to allow someone else to bring in players.

Or fail to in the case of Kinnear.

If the DoF is to be in charge of the academy and other aspects of the club, which is likely to be the case, then he needs to have a football background.

He also needs to be someone Pardew, or whoever the manager is, trusts.

A man who will be respected and won’t be seen as a threat, which no matter what anyone says now is exactly what Kinnear was.

For me, I would stick with a British-based DoF. Someone who genuinely can call up any manager in the country and get through to them.

It is one thing having a list of phone numbers. It is quite another to get, say, Jose Mourinho to actually answer a call.

He needs to be someone who you could trust to jump on a plane, deal with his counterparts and sell Newcastle United to a potential new signing.

Oh, and if he could keep his mouth shut in public when asked by fans who the club were going to sign, then all to the better. And – oh let’s go mad – what if the newguy could be someone withan affinity to the footballclub.

For me, Glenn Roeder would be an ideal candidate.

Hard-working, honest, intelligent, a football man who is a hero at Newcastle.

That’s a lot of ticked boxes right there.

Ashley would be wise to give him a call.