Derby County has appointed Steve Hitchen and Rob Mackenzie as Directors of Recruitment with immediate effect.
Hitchen and Mackenzie will oversee the club’s recruitment, analysis and scouting operations. Hitchen - who has already started work at club’s Training Centre - joins from Queens Park Rangers. Mackenzie will link up with the Rams later this month from Tottenham Hotspur.
Hitchen was Head of European Recruitment at the Loftus Road club and also has experience of working in senior roles in the scouting departments of Tottenham Hotspur and Liverpool. He has specialist knowledge of European football and was based in France for many years.
A former player with Blackburn Rovers and Macclesfield Town, Hitchen spent five years at Spurs and two years at the Anfield club before his three-year stint at QPR.
Mackenzie – a player analysis expert – has been Spurs’ Head of Player Identification since February 2015.
He joined Tottenham after spending five-and-a-half successful years at Leicester City, where he held a Performance Analysis role before being appointed Head of Technical Scouting. Mackenzie was responsible for providing supplementary information to then Head of Recruitment Steve Walsh.
Both will report to Manager Nigel Pearson and the club’s President & Chief Executive Sam Rush.
