News today that Rafa Benitez isn’t even the bookies favorite to take over the West Ham job should the owners decide to sack Slaven Bilic within the next month.
The new favorite is former Manchester City boss Roberto Mancini and that’s according to the London Evening Standard.
Mancini is currently the manager of Zenit Saint Petersburg and has been since June 1st of this year after being fired last summer from Inter-Milan.
Whereas Rafa Benitez will no doubt be disillusioned with Mike Ashley at Newcastle, most of the other things at the club (that’s apart from the money available) he has complete control of.
It’s difficult to see how he could have so much control at another club, should he leave the Magpies, and it’s almost certain that Rafa will at least stay on board until the end of the season.
Rafa Benitez – at Newcastle for another two years?
We are hoping that Mike Ashley comes to his senses soon, and maybe we can bring two or three players in during the January transfer window – which is what we were also hoping last January, but that didn’t happen.
We also hope that he can do a lot better than most people are expecting in the Premier League and that we can still finish around mid table.
If that happens, it will be an encouragement for Rafa that he’s still making progress and then we should have a lot more money next summer to spend on new players than we’ve had this summer.
If we do finish around 10th, we’ll get about £125M from the Premier League next May.
Rafa has just less than two years left on his contract, and he could see out his contract and judge how far he has taken Newcastle by then, even without too much help from the Newcastle owner.
There’s a lot of hope in that statement of course.
What do you think?
Comments welcome.
5 comments so far
lesh
Sep 5, 2017 at 1:10 PM
Comment #1from previous
Jesper and all
As a way of stirring the pot, if 50000 fans sent a copy of the open letter to Ashley at Shirebrook – or even an envelope with a polite message in it – UNSTAMPED, Royal Mail want to be paid for delivery and give SD’s admin a headache. Doing the same but sent to individual SD shops would cause problems too.
jimmysmith
Sep 5, 2017 at 1:20 PM
Comment #2“Wouldn’t even back Rafa Benitez”. Should be written on his tombstone.
Jib
Sep 5, 2017 at 1:22 PM
Comment #3Lesh
The postage does not have to be paid on unstamped letters
Tsunki
Sep 5, 2017 at 1:27 PM
Comment #4I’m sure someone could set up a crowdfunding page for that jimmy
Chancel be a fine thing
Sep 5, 2017 at 2:22 PM
Comment #5On Justin Barnes, I think him a result of Ashley needing to shift the goal posts to regain control at the club. When Rafa first came, he wanted control of football matters, and this was widely reported. It was assumed, by some press, when he took the job that this was the case. It turned out that this had not been agreed, but Rafa took the job, with this issue still under discussion, as there was no transfer window before the end of the season.
I suspect Ashley was hoping Rafa would keep them up, then he could not deliver the promises of footballing control, Rafa could leave and hey presto, still in the premier league and no compo to pay. Just the view through my Ashley Bitterness (TM) shades.
But unfortunately we get relegated and Ashley, for all his faults, hates seeing our club out of the top tier of football. So he sees keeping Rafa as the best way of achieving this. This means Rafa is holding some cards in the negotiation and so Ashley has to cede some control, giving Penfold’s remote control to Rafa. Now Rafa has a much bigger control in the club, and the Rafalution starts.
Ashley now needs to reassert control, for whatever his reasons; and to this extent introduces Barnes. Now Ashley has given Rafa all he asked for, but has shifted the goal posts to take away the effectiveness of Rafa’s control.
Likewise with the transfer spending. Rafa probably went to the blog school of football economics, and the conversation probably went something like this:
Ashley: “You can have all the money generated by the club through promotion”
Rafa: “So I’ll have about 60 to 80 million to spend on players”
Ashley: “what was that Rafa, couldn’t quite understand you”
Rafa: “So I have 80 million to spend”
Ashley: “Still can’t understand”
Rafa: “I’ll have 80 million to spend”
Ashley: “yes”(note to self, remember to say I couldn’t understand his bad english when I agreed)
Rafa: “Thanks Mike, we will really be able to take this club forward now”
Ashley: “Fatspanishwaiterssaywhat”
Rafa: “what”
I just hope that Rafa calms down after his shafting and comes to the conclusion he can still work his dreams under the Ashley constraints. He’s got Ashleys number now. We could have told him from the start.