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Newcastle United sporting director Ross Wilson has said the club had been preparing for Eddie Howe’s exit as manager for as long as nine months.

Wilson, who arrived at Newcastle in October from Nottingham Forest, said Howe’s departure in July was neither “chaotic” nor “painful” because the club had been working on plans for his successor for quite some time.

He said: “Clearly the timing wasn’t planned. But the reason we could move so quickly was because we’d been preparing for a number of months.

“Eddie’s an exceptionally talented coach and that meant he was probably going to do something else at some point. We had to be prepared for that.”

Howe stepped down in July after Newcastle finished a disappointing 12th in the Premier League, with the Englishman deciding he was ready for a break after five years on Tyneside. He was succeeded by former Red Bull Salzburg and Al-Ahli manager Matthias Jaissle.

Wilson said: “Eddie leaving didn’t feel chaotic and it didn’t feel painful. Eddie would be the first to tell you that.

“I came here 10 or 11 months ago and I’ve been planning in the background for a managerial change over eight or nine of those months. That doesn’t mean we were always going to go to Matthias, but he was always part of our planning.”

It has been a turbulent summer for the Magpies, who lost several important players as well as their manager. Anthony Gordon, Sandro Tonali and Bruno Guimaraes all moved on, with Wilson admitting that Guimaraes’ £75m transfer to Arsenal was one the club had wanted to prevent.

“There’s no point pretending otherwise: we did not want to lose Bruno Guimaraes,” he said. “That was really disappointing. But everything else that happened during the window was planned.

“ That doesn’t mean every single player [who the club signed] was the number one name on our list. Clearly we were disappointed a couple of times but that’s normal. No club reaches the end of a window getting every target they wanted.”