Who would make an ideal director of football? Both Newcastle United and Sunderland hope they have appointed the perfect man and chief football writer Paul Fraser examines the latest arrivals on Tyne & Wear

OVER the course of the last nine days, the North-East's Premier League clubs have taken a similar route. For the first time, Newcastle United and Sunderland have both put a director of football in place in the hope of taking the club forward.

Like him or loathe him, Joe Kinnear will soon be on Tyneside having a major say in the way Newcastle play and who plays for them. Roberto De Fanti, a relative unknown on British soil up until last month, has moved in at the Academy of Light to plot Sunderland's revival after last season's struggles.

It is impossible to predict who will have the greatest effect or if the moves work. A certainty is that times are about to take a dramatic twist in the corridors of power inside the Tyne-Wear rivals.

Newcastle might have flirted disastrously with someone holding such a role in the past, when Dennis Wise ended up being more famous for watching YouTube than his signings in the role of executive director (football).

But there was an argument then that Wise at least had fresh ideas and a forward-thinking outlook. Kinnear has not been involved in the game since leaving his managerial post at St James Park in February 2009, raising doubts about what he knows about the extensive foreign market.

Looking abroad has been the Newcastle mantra, exploiting foreign leagues under the scouting of Graham Carr; and relatively successfully too, even if last season ended with them narrowly avoiding relegation.

Kinnear is unlikely to be looking to change Carr's work abroad, but he will effectively become the line manager for the chief scout and Alan Pardew to go to with their ideas and problems.

That in itself is likely to cause problems.

How Pardew, Kinnear and Carr deal with those difficulties will, ultimately, determine how well Newcastle perform. An unhappy manager and backroom team will almost certainly result in poor results - and eventually a change of boss.

Kinnear, 66, had a relatively successful managerial career before he was forced to quit following a heart attack in February 2009. Starting off as a manager in India he ended up on Tyneside via Nepal, Doncaster, Wimbledon and Nottingham.

When he was at Newcastle the first time around he bought Kevin Nolan in the January before his departure, some of his best signings arrived much earlier in his career. Vinnie Jones and John Hartson at Wimbledon and former Hartlepool striker Steve Howard became a real success in the Championship and below while at Luton.

Football has moved on from the traditional values of tactics, with just as much emphasis now placed on targeting overseas talent with the potential to grow and add value in times of Financial Fair Play.

After years of investing, that is why Sunderland have gone down a completely different route to the tried and trusted.

Out have gone Martin O'Neill and Steve Bruce and the Italian revolution has been sworn in. Will that prove better than the model Newcastle have tinkered with? Even if the Sunderland squad is in need of a complete overhaul.

When Paolo Di Canio was appointed towards the back end of last season, it was De Fanti recommending him to the club's owner Ellis Short.

And when Valentino Angeloni replaced Bryan Robson as chief scout last week, he did so after forging a good relationship with De Fanti over the years and the arrivals of Cabral, Modibo Diakite, Valentin Roberge and El-Hadji Ba were the first results of the new recruitment team.

Unlike Kinnear, De Fanti's career is only just starting. At the age of 39 he has never played professionally, nor has he managed or been a scout.

But his work as a FIFA-registered agent has opened the door to a number of opportunities, while a completely different market has been created for Sunderland to explore.

Despite never playing the game professionally, an accusation likely to be levelled at him which cant be thrown in Kinnear's direction, he is boasting a long list of contacts after striking deals for both Udinese and Inter Milan.

He was a key mover in Sunderland's purchase of Asamoah Gyan when he joined from Rennes in a £13m deal, while he was involved in Alexis Sanchez's switch from Udinese to Barcelona.

A long list of contacts has every chance of working better than a CV boasting previous managerial experience in English football for a newly-appointed director of football.

Such a prominent position inside a football club has become more prevalent on these shores in the last decade, but they have not always worked as they should. Harry Redknapp at Portsmouth and Jacques Santini at Tottenham are just two who would vouch for that.

Such an approach, however, has been synonymous with the Italian game for decades.

Italian journalist Federico Farcomeri explained: "Directors of football started to work in the Calcio industry [Italian football] in the 1960s. Until then, it was the club secretary who had more powers and had the duty to organise every aspect of the club's sporting life.

"Presidents started to feel the need for a professional figure who could be in charge of the choice of players, the negotiations with other clubs and who could define the terms of their contracts.

"This new professional figure was ideally between the old club secretary and the manager. Tensions erupted all the time and I'd say that they still exist, although there's a mutual acceptance of the roles nowadays."

Rightly or wrongly, that is the situation Pardew has to get used to at St James' Park. How he copes with the change could determine his future.

Over at Sunderland there will be no such difficulties. Di Canio knows what he has taken on, so do De Fanti and Angeloni. The question on Wearside will be whether Short's gamble to go Italian and attract players on the cheap from Europe will prove more successful.

Can a director of football be successful in the North-East? Next season should provide the answer.