‘Completed My Mission’: Paul Mitchell’s Monumental Impact At Monaco – Data Analysis

Paul Mitchell has become one of the most highly sought-after names in football for a certain select group of clubs that could avail of his services.

The 41-year-old Mancunian has announced that he’s going to leave his current club, Monaco, once they’ve got a replacement settled in and ready to assume his sporting director hot seat.

Mitchell has led a very interesting career to end up becoming such a well-known name and highly-rated figure at the top of the game.

A former midfielder, Mitchell’s playing career was cut short due to a bad injury that ultimately played a deciding factor in his decision to retire from playing at 27 years old.

Determined not to let that be the end of his story in football, Mitchell shifted his focus to excel in a different area of the game.

He became involved in the scouting side of things, taking on key roles at MK Dons, Southampton, Tottenham Hotspur, Red Bull international and then Monaco, with job titles ranging from Chief Scout to Head of Scouting to Technical Director to Sporting Director.

He’s credited with having played a key role in signings like the transfer of Bayern’s Sadio Mané to Southampton from RB Salzburg, Dele Alli from MK Dons to Tottenham and Heung-min Son from Bayer Leverkusen to Tottenham to name a few, while Mitchell is reported to have blossomed while working alongside former Manchester United manager Ralf Rangnick at Red Bull.

Now, Mitchell is being linked with the likes of Liverpool and, indeed, Manchester United in his own right, as he readies himself for his next challenge.

The “workaholic”, as described by former teammate Aaron Wilbraham in an April 2022 article from The Athletic, declared that he “completed [his] mission” with Les Monégasques when explaining his decision to leave the club, with one eye seemingly on a return to his native England where he’s said to be in hot demand, per a recent report by L’Équipe.

On that note, this piece is going to have a little look into Mitchell’s Monaco mission and lay out exactly what he was responsible for and what he achieved with Les Monégasques.

With the help of relevant data and statistics, we’ll provide an analysis of the Ligue 1 club’s transformation and journey with Mitchell.

Our data analysis will focus on three distinct areas which will act as our three sections in this piece, two of which are more specific requirements of his job in Monaco and one of which is a more overarching requirement.

Without further adieu, let’s crack on with the analysis!

Paul Mitchell Tactics & Formations

Initially, on joining Monaco, Mitchell conducted a review of the club to analyse where they needed improvement.

He came to the conclusion that a full-on rebuild was necessary, which can’t have been overly pleasing to the ears of his bosses but, at the same time, perhaps provided an indication of the thorough nature of this sporting director’s work.

He was given a lot of responsibility with this rebuild, starting by replacing head coach Robert Moreno with former Bayern boss Niko Kovač before tackling the playing squad and trimming it down.

Securing the right head coach was key for the project, as Mitchell and this figure had to be somewhat aligned on their view of the game in order to ensure the types of players coming in were ones that could be used to their full potential within Monaco’s system, while also helping to ensure Mitchell and his team were looking at the right types of players.

With the “aggressive” and “active” vision of Kovač, former Monaco CEO Oleg Petrov explained that Mitchell saw someone who endorsed a “trendy” and “modern” style of play that appealed to him.

With that part of the job done, trimming the first team squad became paramount.

In 2017/18, 32 different players featured for Monaco in Ligue 1.

In 2018/19, that number rose to a whopping 42 players, while 28 featured in the pandemic-curtailed 2019/20 campaign.