Revealed: What Premier League rules say about Dan Ashworth’s email blunder to Man United

Manchester United are still eagerly trying to get sporting director Dan Ashworth through the door, but are running into complications.

INEOS aims to change the culture at United and one of the ways they are planning for that is through appointing new and improved leadership personnel.

Jason Wilcox and Omar Berrada have come into the club as technical director and chief executive, respectively, while the chase for Ashworth has been going on for several months.

The former Brighton director is currently on gardening leave and is set to take Newcastle to arbitration in the coming weeks in an attempt to speed up proceedings.

At the moment, The Magpies have no intention of releasing him from the lengthy gardening period until Unitec cough up a significant amount in compensation, reported to be around £20 million.

Ashworth’s mistake

Newcastle’s current position could be strengthened going into arbitration after it was revealed by MailOnline that Ashworth accidentally sent a blind copy to his own Newcastle email address when he was responding to Omar Berrada about the position at Old Trafford.

In early February, Ashworth emailed Berrada – at an INEOS account – and made it clear that he wanted to accept the offer to become the sporting director at United. This was before United or Ashworth informed Newcastle of the interest.

It was added that Ashworth disclosed details to Berrada of the agreement between Newcastle and Brighton that took him to St James’ Park in the summer of 2022, which would likely be a breach of confidentiality to each of Newcastle and Brighton.

What do the rules say?

This news has appeared to place a dent in United’s hopes of getting their man with relative ease over the coming weeks. In fact, The Times have reported that Ashworth’s email exchange could be crucial in the forthcoming arbitration case against his former club.

The report went onto add that Premier League’s rules state that each club and director should behave towards each other with the “utmost good faith” and it could be a breach if they were to “act dishonestly towards another club or engage in conduct that is intended to circumvent these rules”.

It was also explained that there remains a large distance in terms of the compensation fee between the two clubs. United have so far offered Newcastle around £2.5m in compensation for Ashworth.