Rafa Benitez has just given his press conference for the game against Ipswich Town tomorrow afternoon at St. James’ Park where we hope to extend our winning streak to five games and stay at the top of the league.
Rafa has again said he is not worried about the league table at the moment and has again stressed they will take every single game one at a time and try to win it and our players must concentrate and focus.
Rafa Benitez – finished his press conference
Here are some of the initial comments Rafa made about the game tomorrow afternoon against The Tractor Boys that should draw another massive crowd to St. James’ Park:
“I was not worried about the table before, and I am not worried about it now. The main thing is that we have the right mentality.”
“They don’t need to feel any pressure, but it’s better to stay top.”
“We have to approach every game in the same way. We have to concentrate and focus.”
“The whole team is defending well. You start defending with Dwight Gayle, and you start attacking with Darlow or Sels.”
“Dwight Gayle has pace, ability and when he is in front of goal he can score goals – it doesn’t matter which division.”
“Vurnon Anita is clever, he’s intelligent, and he knows what he has to do in each position.”
“I could feel that this club has a city behind the team. It’s really important that you can see the fans are happy.”
“But there are still a lot of games to play. We must enjoy it, but take it one game at a time.”
Almost nine fans in ten think we will win this game tomorrow.
What do you think?
Comments welcome.
7 comments so far
Essex Geordie Bill
Oct 21, 2016 at 1:25 PM
Comment #1Aah, total football then!! 🙂
Lee Charnley Bunga Party
Oct 21, 2016 at 1:25 PM
Comment #2This is a good test of the teams mentality and ability to deal with a different kind of pressure !
In recent years we go on a good run only to then falter at home so lets try and break that cycle as we seem to have rectified the mentality away from home !
Jail for Ashley
Oct 21, 2016 at 1:28 PM
Comment #3I don’t think we’ll lose top spot from now till the end of the season.
Lee Charnley Bunga Party
Oct 21, 2016 at 1:34 PM
Comment #4@Jail
I hope so !!
mickybraham
Oct 21, 2016 at 1:49 PM
Comment #5Rafa Bingo
Darlow
Yedlin Lascelles Clark Dummett
Hayden Shelvey
Ritchie Diame Atsu
Gayle
Rafa said there maybe changes to keep people happy.
The only people I could see having a justified reason to be unhappy at not starting are Yedlin and Atsu. Both done well but Anita and Gouffran are preferred.
Does make me think Mitro could come in but you can’t really drop Gayle – guess we’ll just have to see.
Happy with whatever team he puts out to be fair
Think Sels, hanley, perez, murphy will get the nod Tuesday night.
stuart no9
Oct 21, 2016 at 1:49 PM
Comment #6i expected to be top in october , but after the first 2 games, i wasnt sure . now we are there we will stay or maybe drop a place some time if we hit a dodgy patch like most teams do or weve had urs already at the start of the season lets hope. i think we have pt the fear factor into ‘ some’ teams now which will make it easier to contrlol games and play at our pace.Cant see us finishing out the top 2.
Any one know howmany tickets we could get for the forrest game on dec 2nd ??
GeordieGadie
Oct 21, 2016 at 4:11 PM
Comment #7what a genius!
Yes it doesn’t matter what position you’re at because:
1- Every game will naturally have an opponent, why add 3 or 4 (competitors for top spot) more whom we can’t control, we can only play against one team at a time.
2- If you’re good enough you will be top, but that doesn’t mean you can force all other teams to be bad just to please you
3- If we concentrate on OUR football then the 23 other teams will play us one day or another, beat them to be on top of them, and don’t worry about the 22 other teams, beat them when you play them
What a bloody genius!
Last year one of the reasons (actually the main reason) for our demise is that we depended on other teams performing bad (such as our unwashed neighbours from the fishing village down the road), not only that, that’s very normal, but our worst every failure came when we were expecting teams such as Everton and Chelsea to play well and beat opponents.
if either of these two played to a tenth of their strength against the mackems we would be playing premiere league now!
So yes, Rafa is right.