Rafa Benitez currently has a first team squad of 27 players but a number of them have not played too many games for us, although that could change by the end of the season.
Players like Achraf Lazaar, Grant Hanley, Jesus Gamez and Daryl Murphy have not played too many games.
But Daryl has now shown his worth and has scored 5 good goals for Newcastle and could yet be a hero in the final 9 games of the season because of his vast experience in the Championship.
Achraf Lazaar with Rafa Benitez last August
Grant Hanley is likely to come in and play in place of the injured Ciaran Clark at St. Andrew’s on Saturday and he’s a decent player with very good leadership skills who may yet have a future at the club.
Gamez played on Saturday and will fight for the right back position with Vurnon Anita now that American DeAndre Yedlin is currently out injured.
One player who has not played much at all is Achraf Lazaar and Paul Dummett has nailed down that left-back spot with some good performances and Lazaar is unlikely to play much through the end of the season.
Rafa has used some choice words today to talk about transfers and this is what he has said as reported in the Shields Gazette:
“When you sign players you make mistakes.” “It’s not like buying a piece of furniture and you say ‘I put that here’ and that is it.”
“They have families, they have to be comfortable and in football you can only play 11 players – not the 27 that we have.”
“People who are not involved cannot be happy all of the time,”
“We have managed to keep the majority of them happy for a long, long time.”
“Everyone has to accept they might not play, but if we do well we will be successful together.”
It’s always difficult in the transfer market but the general opinion is that Rafa and Lee Charnley did extremely well last summer and worked well together.
If we can get promoted and have a similarly successful transfer market this summer, fans will be happy enough – or at least we’ll be.
We’d be ecstatic if we get promoted – for starters.
🙂
There will always be players you buy who don’t make it for one reason or another – that’s the nature of transfers – you are dealing with people.
What do you think?
Comments welcome.
2 comments so far
lesh
Mar 15, 2017 at 9:12 AM
Comment #1Rafa’s words have a lot of credibility to those who know what football’s about. But, Ashley will probably sees players as ‘pieces of furniture’ rather than human beings. I’ve no doubt that Rafa’s words are meant for Ashley’s consumption and he’s preparing the ground for the face-to-face with Ashley.
robertsleftfoot
Mar 15, 2017 at 12:42 PM
Comment #2Rafa has always had a high turnover of players, sometimes he thinks he is playing football manager 2017.
It sounds like he is trying to cover his own backside because 2 of his more expensive signings he doesnt appear to rate at all in Lazaar and Hanley.
Realistically we need to spend close to £100 mill IF we get promoted but I can see Ashley putting the breaks on at about the £50 mill mark which in todays market is around 3 decent players. If people are giving £15 mill for Jeffrey Schulpp then we are in trouble come the summer if we dont have much funds available.