Here's what a Southampton blogger had to say about him....just take it with a pinch of salt...
By a bizarre coincidence only days after Spurs are linked in the national press with Saints head of recruitment Paul Mitchell he has handed in his notice.
At this moment in time its unclear whether Mitchell will be heading to White Hart Lane or perhaps he has something else lined up, although I don't think many people would bet against him being unveiled at Spurs in the very near future.
There are two facts to consider in this case, the first is money talks and almost certainly a desperate Daniel Levy will be paying well over the top and secondly Mitchell not having had a lucrative playing career is in no position to turn down a big offer.
Saints would obviously have preferred to keep Mitchell, no one likes to see change in a system, but the Club are relaxed about the development and are stressing that Mitchell is only one man in a system and that system remains intact without him.
Indeed there are those that would say that Mitchell's influence has not been as great as has been made out by Neil Ashton in the Daily Mail, he joined the club in January 2012, in that transfer window Saints made two signings, the first was Billy Sharp who had been limked with the club at the start of the season and the second Tadanari Lee who arrived fro Japan, not a player you would have expected Mitchell to have been aware of in his previous role at MK Don's.
Mitchell was recruited for the hope that Saints would be promoted to the Premier league, that proved to be the case and the first window he was involved in saw mixed results, Jay Rodriguez signed early in the window has been a big success, as has Steven Davis and Nathaniel Clyne, but then it all started to go a little wrong, Paulo Gazzaniga has not made the progress expected, Yoshida is so so at best, Mayuka has at £3.5 million been a disaster as has Gaston Ramirez at £12 million, both were signed but didn't appear to fit in with the Club's now style of play.
The recruitment of Artur Boruc was good, but the January signing of Vegard Forren was again an expensive folly with the Norwegian leaving without kicking a ball in first team anger for Saints, t the end of 2012/13 big questions were being asked of Saints transfer dealings.
The summer of 2013 brought only three players signed, all for big fee's, Dejan Lovren has obviously see a big profit realised, it cannot be denied that he had a good start to the season, but his second half was less spectacular and he is now being found out at Liverpool, Wanyama has been a great signing, but the third Osvaldo has paled the money we have wasted in both transfer fee and wages on Gaston Ramirez into insignificance.
This time last year our transfer policy was under intense criticism we either seemed in the main to sign players who were not up to the job or overpriced ones that did not fit into our system, the problem was that a Club of Saints size could not keep wasting vast amounts of money on players who turned out to be flops, in those first two seasons we spend in the region of £70 million yet on Mayuka, Forren, Osvaldo & Ramirez we spent half of that for little return.
So the jury was very much out on our transfer committee at the end of 2013/14, we were not seen as a side that made astute signings we were seen as having a scattergun approach, the good players we did get in we paid too much money for and in general apart from the early part of the summer window in 2012 our dealings were not great.
But was Paul Mitchell part of the problem or part of the solution, in fairness to him he was in a system were the then man at the top was meddling in every aspect of the club and going above those he was paying to run departments for him, there is no reason to believe that the transfer or more formally player recruitment department would have been any different.
Certainly the summer of 2014 looks at this moment to be a golden one, most would say the factor behind that is Ronald Koeman and there is a big case for that, almost definitely Koeman's presence and reputation has helped attract players who would not have joined before his arrival, some of these like Pelle and Tadic would have been his own choice of target. But others would have been at the suggestion of our player recruitment system.
So we should not just rubbish Paul Mitchell just because he has been enticed off to join Spurs, he has played a role in our progress, but we should not over emphasise that role, he was part of a system rather than the whole of that system, his job was not to develop players it was to gather information and process that data to a point where those responsible for the signings would take a look at those potential signings who might be of interest, in essence Mitchell's job was to sort the wheat from the chaff.
It is ironic that Mauricio Pochettino is said to have such confidence in Mitchell for two reasons, firstly that in the short time they worked together between January 2013- May 2014 we signed only four players, the first Forren was a disaster, likewise Osvaldo who having played under Pochettino at Espanyol, the manager would have known more about that anyone at the club, the other two were big signings and in that respect not that difficult to source, so the question is why does Pochettino see Mitchell as being so good, his qualities were not at their best when the Argentinian was at St Mary's.
The work of player recruitment is often overlooked and it is not the big signings where it earns its corn, it is in identifying those players who have potential and who the club can sign cheaply and develop or those players who we can sneak in under the radar before the big clubs swoop.
We should not worry about whether this will affect the players, they would not have had any dealings with Mitchell till after they had joined, unlike say Ronald Koeman he is not a figure that would have been a factor in whether a player joined us or not.
The loss of Paul Mitchell is not a major blow to the club, it is a blip and they will soon identify a replacement and have him in place, indeed the only real issue is that Mitchell will be party to our transfer targets for the January transfer window and it would be folly to assume that he will not pass these on to his next employer, indeed may already have done so.
Whether Mitchell will save the job of Pochettino and indeed his employer Levy will soon be found out, certainly this coming transfer window will be crucial to both, if Spurs again get it wrong then the chances of them both being at White Hart Lane are very slim.
