It’s very clear we have a world-class manager in place at Newcastle and to have won three European Championships with three different clubs takes some doing.
And that’s just some of the success Rafa Benitez has had in his very successful career so far.
But that career can get even better as manager of Newcastle United, and he seems to have everything in place to be successful, assuming we get new owners soon.
The players listen to everything Rafa says, and the home fans do the same thing and then do what’s necessary to help the team during the games.
The fans were rewarded on Saturday with that late goal from Mikel Merino to get the win.
But yes – it was a mediocre game at best to watch with Newcastle nowhere near their best form against a very well organized and spirited Crystal Place side.
Rafa Benitez – we must all stick together
Rafa is convinced the team can keep improving and he has said this today – as reported in the Chronicle – when he was asked if he thought the times ahead for the club could be exciting:
“Yes, I feel like it’s important to realize where we were and where we are.”
“We were relegated, we have come back from the Championship and to be where we are in the Premier League.”
“Every fan, every player and every member of staff needs to remember that the way we have done this is by working hard and sticking together.”
“We are where we are and we are happy with what we have got. We have to make sure these players continue to believe and we can improve and do better.”
“I know we won, but it was not a great game or an easy game.” (you can say that again)
“It’s a young team and we can improve a lot of things and we can improve a lot of players, we must believe we can get results.”
“I think the players always believed they did have the quality for the Premier League, they had that confidence after the first game.”
“Even though we lost to Tottenham, we played with 10 men, but you could see this was a very good team.”
“We could see the level, we could see how hard we worked and how organized we were.”
“If you can do that, you will have chances to be successful.”
“The main thing is the players are working hard, you can say what you want, but if they are not willing to do it, the team will not improve.”
“They want to work hard and they want to learn – the players listen to you, that’s the main thing.”
“After that, young players, it is easier when they see a manager with experience.”
“You put everything together and we have a team that still has plenty of games to go, but my message to everybody is that we have achieved nothing.”
“We have to keep going.”
“If we lose three games in a row, everybody will be panicking, but we are in a really good position.”
“We have to keep doing the same things and stick together and take it one game at a time.”
“We can be stronger if we keep this idea. If we think we have done a great job, we will not.”
“I’m always demanding, that is the way. You cannot think you have achieved anything because in my experience if you do, that, you will not achieve anything.”
“Everyone was expecting this would be an easy game, but it wasn’t. I have this experience, I can say: ‘Don’t do this, don’t do that.’”
“We have to realize that we have to focus on every single game.”
Great words there form Rafa.
We are reminded of the axiom that once any player believes their own headlines it’s downhill from there.
It’s true in any profession – to believe you can become better and that you are always learning – however old you are.
And as many readers will testify – I am still trying to improve on how to write decent articles – after over 10 years of trying.
🙂
Newcastle are in a really good place right now – we just need to keep Rafa Benitez on board for as long as we possibly can – and success will be assured.
Rafa Benitez was born to manage Newcastle United.
Comments welcome.
94 comments so far
jesperfuglsang - capt'n awesome of the lemon crew
Oct 23, 2017 at 9:12 AM
Comment #1Repost:
Does anyone watch Spain U21? I saw them back in Marta when they played Denmark and I don’t remember Merino bring a #10 a lot as he likes to highlight on every article about the lad…
…I remember him being a #6 and more of a DM kind of player. But then again I don’t watch Spain U21 on a regular basis…
kimbo
Oct 23, 2017 at 9:20 AM
Comment #2What is required to be successful would be a new number 9 and 10. That is the area where we are weakest and were totally useless on Saturday.
Ron Knee
Oct 23, 2017 at 9:21 AM
Comment #3sing
I think if everyone is expected to cheer the team on (not your view I know) it smacks too much of North Korea/Nuremburg Rally for me.
I was at an Arsenal v Liverpool match in the early 70s. It was so boring a good 10% of the crowd were reading newspapers!
jimmysmith
Oct 23, 2017 at 9:32 AM
Comment #4Expat, surely it is 10 years of free advertising, if you accept the club was worth the 250 million he initially paid for it. Unless you buy that nonsense about him not knowing about the debt.
Jail for Ashley
Oct 23, 2017 at 9:35 AM
Comment #5As the demand for season tickets grows they should hire singing monitors, if you’re not doing your bit you get a warning, three strikes and your out 😀
Jail for Ashley
Oct 23, 2017 at 9:44 AM
Comment #6If he sells us for 300M he’s done very well indeed out of us over the last ten years. Hall and Shepherd built us a top class stadium and bought top class players while still taking money out for themselves. Ashley has bought bargain basement while the TV money has been at a premium, that money has been going somewhere despite what the books say, that and all the free advertising he’s done alright.
Ron Knee
Oct 23, 2017 at 9:45 AM
Comment #7“Peter Beardsley is hoping that his young Newcastle United side will get the backing of a decent crowd as they get their first taste of European football tomorrow night.
“Continental competition returns to Tyneside in the shape of the Premier League International Cup at Whitley Park (7pm) with Sparta Prague the visitors to Tyneside.
“Beardsley’s side have now failed to win in seven matches but are hoping to stop the rot against the side from the Czech Republic.”
Jib
Oct 23, 2017 at 9:56 AM
Comment #8Ashley had just recently become a billionaire when he bought NUFC
pretty much on a whim – he thought it would dovetail into SD and if he
wanted he could flip it for a quick profit.
Why would he lie about due diligence when it makes him look a bit of a prat ?
He thought he was getting a bargain at £139 m – when he found he had to put
an extra £117 m in – it was still a fair price.
Calling the extra a soft loan was done for tax purposes and SD advertising was
a fair exchange for saved bank charges.
hibbit
Oct 23, 2017 at 9:58 AM
Comment #9if the buyers prepared to pay X amount what does it matter
all i want is rid of Ashley its up to the buyer what there happy to pay as in any deal
Hail Wor Ashley
Oct 23, 2017 at 9:58 AM
Comment #101 game at a time of course, but as a fan I’ll take the liberty of looking ahead and saying 25pts at the halfway stage would be a solid foundation for 2nd half of the season and would probably have us 8th-10th.
Saying that we could win the next 2 and already be on 20, but I’d take 4pts from the next 2 now if offered.
jimmysmith
Oct 23, 2017 at 9:58 AM
Comment #11I’ll be very surprised if he doesn’t get 350. That’s not remotely outlandish for a solvent, debt free epl club of the stature and potential of NUFC in light of the telly money, the performance of the squad and the manager we have already in place.
martoon
Oct 23, 2017 at 10:01 AM
Comment #12One thing I noticed about the crowd (whether singing or not) that despite the poor level of football they remained patient. A few seasons ago they would have been getting on the player’s backs but there was none of that – well at least where I was sitting. I guess it is because we know with the team we have at the moment we sometimes have to grind out results.
sing in the corner
Oct 23, 2017 at 10:02 AM
Comment #13Ron
Can you explain to me what enjoyment / thrill people get from sitting still in stoney silence? It must take a bit of restraint? I genuinely don’t understand what people derive from the event if they don’t ‘lose’ themselves in it a bit. Really it would be a better idea all round to watch it on sky?
Not having a go it’s everyone’s right to do what they like, as I have said. It just seems alien to me.
Jib
Oct 23, 2017 at 10:03 AM
Comment #14Jail
Newcastle United have paid out £750 million in wages since Ashley
bought us 10 years ago . Two of those years we only got fizzy pop money.
To say Ashley took some out by the back door is laughable.
Why do you think Barnes instructed Rafa to get the wage bill down ?
hibbit
Oct 23, 2017 at 10:05 AM
Comment #15martoon
i think they/we can see the improvement and for a change it definitely is work in progress
sing in the corner
Oct 23, 2017 at 10:10 AM
Comment #16Martoon
Yeah, definitely a lot more patient crowd than previously..
Jail for Ashley
Oct 23, 2017 at 10:12 AM
Comment #17sitc,
There was a father and son next to us and the young lad kept giving me funny looks when I tried to get a song going. They should plant groups of 30 members of the singing sectiin in strategic places around the ground.
Hail Wor Ashley
Oct 23, 2017 at 10:12 AM
Comment #18Martoon
Good point about the lack of groans and berating, suppose baby steps for some and all that, they might learn to enjoy it again eventually.
G
Oct 23, 2017 at 10:14 AM
Comment #19Hail at 9. I have a feeling Burnley will do us over next week, but Bournemouth is entirely winnable, so maybe 3 out of the next 6? Happy if Rafa proves me wrong though.
Thump
Oct 23, 2017 at 10:22 AM
Comment #20A better forward should be a given, as with somebody who can actually play in the hole (if we’re to stick to 4-2-3-1), but really we need to address forward play. Supply is limited to the front men and you can tell by how often Joselu moves out of position to get on the ball. Problem is – nobody moves into his spot, and when they do it’s usually a winger which leaves us open to counter attacks.
sing in the corner
Oct 23, 2017 at 10:31 AM
Comment #21Jail
In the Sir John Hall stand,one game, a woman in the seat behind me kept twisting, and digging me in the back every time I involuntarily leapt to my feet when there was a near miss. 🙁
Tsunki
Oct 23, 2017 at 10:33 AM
Comment #22Sing she would get bored with me I’m like Zebedee whenever there’s a decent pass across the park never mind a shot on goal ha ha
sing in the corner
Oct 23, 2017 at 10:33 AM
Comment #23Jail @ 15
Or a couple of secret police officials with sniper rifles trained on the crowd
Only joshing Ron
Jib
Oct 23, 2017 at 10:35 AM
Comment #24Sing it was probably the involuntary emission
of anal gases that got up her nose
😀
sing in the corner
Oct 23, 2017 at 10:35 AM
Comment #25Tsunki
That’s the spirit.
Problem is, there are too many Dylan’s
🙂
Tsunki
Oct 23, 2017 at 10:37 AM
Comment #26I’ve only been in the quiet areas half a dozen times and it’s an eerie experience. My brother in law had a hilarious argument with a bloke who told him to shut up when he was trying to get a song going in the pitch side seats of the milburn, only spitting distance from the gallowgate corner. I know, i tried. 🙂
sing in the corner
Oct 23, 2017 at 10:38 AM
Comment #27Ioops.
In these days of political correctness, I mean no disrespect to the Welsh by my flagrant, but incidental, Insulting use of a clearly anti Welsh name there.
sing in the corner
Oct 23, 2017 at 10:38 AM
Comment #28*oops haha
Jib
Oct 23, 2017 at 10:40 AM
Comment #29It would have been Tom Petty’s
67th birthday last Friday
Tsunki
Oct 23, 2017 at 10:43 AM
Comment #30Sing you’re right to feel sheepish after such a flagrant welshist reference, I only hope it doesn’t leek onto the wider audience of social media. I could see this dragon on and on.
And i had a scarf as well…thanks…
Jib
Oct 23, 2017 at 10:46 AM
Comment #31Edson Arantes do Nascimento
OR
Pele
to us
77 today
Optimistic Panda
Oct 23, 2017 at 10:48 AM
Comment #32Expat
From previous
Ashley has taken £30m out of the club at least once.
Would he had to have lent the club money if he hadn’t restricted its income so much, no advertising and the refreshments from advertising and club shops.
I bet that’s a tidy little sum over ten years so if he’d let the club actually make the money it’s capable of he’d never had to loan it money, this situation is of his making and what he wanted!
Jail for Ashley
Oct 23, 2017 at 10:54 AM
Comment #33The one thing that will always puzzle me on Ashleys reign was why did he hire KK. He had no intention of backing him so why bother going to the trouble of getting him and the inevitable animosity that followed. Unless it was deliberately planned so that he could go to war with us as an excuse not to invest what he promised.
Jib
Oct 23, 2017 at 10:54 AM
Comment #34Weird Al Yankovich 57 today
Tsunki
Oct 23, 2017 at 10:55 AM
Comment #35I don’t believe even £130m would have got you much bank interest over ten years, the rates have been pretty dismal.
You’d be countering the loss of potential of interest against revenue gained elsewhere not least from leveraging ground advertising, and of course your free loan would get you a tax break.
When you consider the benefits of such things as ground ads has been accounted for outside of the NUFC business sphere, you have to wonder what the accountants have managed to do with other revenue streams. There are some tidy deficits posted to balance the income and yet HMRC are still pondering where their money has gone. Clever people these bean counters especially as they now have the job of showing why NUFC is not actually a money pit after all 😉
Tsunki
Oct 23, 2017 at 11:01 AM
Comment #36Jail it was clearly a simplistic and cynical move to assauge the dim-witted, coal-chewing, cloth-capped heathen. It was a blind sider to stall off the effects of his plan to sit us mid table while he takes in the TV money and gets free ads for his baby. Wisevision was the plan to turn over nice money on player churn. It was an arrogant and stupid plan that backfired repeatedly as he tried to re-implement the stupid idea time and again.
Jail for Ashley
Oct 23, 2017 at 11:04 AM
Comment #37There still advertising the Wigan game corporate seats that was back in April, how can that be helping revenue streams.
jayphoto
Oct 23, 2017 at 11:06 AM
Comment #38@jesper – can’t profess to know much about Spanish football but I know a bit about the bundesliga and Dortmund used him super deep and more than a few times he played in the back 3… I read in an article Merino saying he prefers midfield and I’ve seen a few things from Spanish pundits saying hes very similar to Javi Martinez who was a central midfielder Pep turning into a CB at Bayern, one things for sure, hes a steal at the 9m in total Newcastle had to pay (loan fee and permanent amount)
I can’t see him or Shelvey successfully playing #10 though.. Both have strengths that are bringing the ball out with the game infront of them, but also, both aren’t particular quick when it comes to off the ball movement which is important as a 10 as space is limited..also for me it’d make no sense weakening the centre of the park which is looking good…
Personally think if any players would be suited moving into the 10 role itd be Atsu who has played there for Ghana or Ritchie who just seems like hed be a 8/10 player in every position.. That said, Diame actually had a bit of a minor impact on Saturday too.. for me its the position I’d most like to see strengthened in January
jesperfuglsang - capt'n awesome of the lemon crew
Oct 23, 2017 at 11:13 AM
Comment #39Thanks Jay…that goes in line with what I thought and what I recall from the U21 game between Spain and Denmark in Marts I think…
I read Diame had a great impact against Palace…we need to keep them all sharp and motivated…
Will be instrumental for Perez as he has a tendency to be very inconsistent
Ron Knee
Oct 23, 2017 at 11:14 AM
Comment #40sing
We didn’t have “stoney silence” when I used to go. It was pretty raucous, but not all comments were positive!