There were reports in the Telegraph, and the Mirror over the last few says that Rafa Benitez is at breaking point with Newcastle owner Mike Ashley.
He wants the club to (finally) deliver on some good players he wants this month – including Atlanta United player maker Miguel Almiron.
There’s just no chance Newcastle will sign him this month.
Failure to have a good transfer window (which would be unusual in itself) will cause Rafa to refuse to negotiate for a new contract, and he will leave Newcastle at the end of June.
Rafa Benitez – ultimatum to Mike Ashley
If that possibility doesn’t get Mike Ashley and his cohorts (none of them know anything about running a football club) busy in trying to do some decent loan deals nothing will.
But we are afraid that Newcastle will fail in their attempts over the next week before the window closes.
We’ve just lost out on Atletico Madrid winger Gelson Martins, who preferred to join Monaco.
If we do bring in three players on loan, they are likely to be way down on Rafa’s list and not what he wanted this month.
Rafa wants a left back, left winger (wingback) and striker brought in at a minimum in the next week.
If Rafa does decide to stay, he wants to know after this transfer window that he’ll have a better side for next season and will not be fighting relegation again.
He already said he doesn’t want to fight relegation with Newcastle every single season becasue of a lack of investment from the owner.
He has managed to bring in some good players last summer, Ki, Fernandez, Dubravka, Rondon, and Schar but it was via the bargain basement.
Mike Ashley wouldn’t even buy West Brom striker Rondon for his release clause of £16.5M.
That was because he was too old at 29, so he finally brought him in on a season loan, and we lost Dwight Gayle on loan (going to West Brom) in that deal.
It took almost three months for that deal to finally go through.
It’s not looking good at the moment, and if Newcastle don’t do something remarkable in the next seven days, Mike Ashley will be looking for a new manager this summer.
That will need to be somebody who’s willing to work under very tight financial restraints on Tyneside – so we’ll not get anybody in the top bracket.
Certainly, not of the caliber of Rafa Benitez.
These next seven days will be crucial for Newcastle’s future.
Comments welcome.
5 comments so far
BlacknWhiteBarmy
Jan 24, 2019 at 10:07 AM
Comment #1The pic of Rafa looks like he is joining in on a chorus of “Stand up if you hate Ashley”
Tsunki
Jan 24, 2019 at 10:11 AM
Comment #2Errrrrr…hmmm…welllll……. If by “lost out on” you mean “never really had anything to do with”….
TomaKaThor
Jan 24, 2019 at 10:12 AM
Comment #3If only the transfer window was longer than a week then we wouldn’t be scrambling for last minute loan deals for bottom of the pile players every January… Shame the window isn’t a month long. *facepalm*
bettyswallocks
Jan 24, 2019 at 10:14 AM
Comment #4bettyswallocks
Jan 24, 2019 at 10:06 AM
Comment #6
We really are going to have to rally as many different groups together as we can to have any real effect on Ashley. There are plenty of opportunities right here on this blog. As I said I’m sure Lesh could motivate the folk music fraternity into some sort of posse and OLG could get his CB radio enthusiasts to form an action group. We could even have a cross channel assault from some of our European counterparts. I’m sure Jesper could form a contingent of angry Danish househusbands if he felt so inclined.
ronaldo aarons
Jan 24, 2019 at 10:20 AM
Comment #5NY Mag
Jan 24, 2019 at 3:05 AM
Comment #342
Ronaldo,
Commercial revenue is a really dicey topic – I’ll get absolute pelters for trying to explain what’s gone on (but since it’s late at night, I can duck and hope the flack dies away)
When Ashley took over we were loosing ~£30M per season – so what he did was ditch all non-core businesses……meaning that he outsourced everything that was not football team related….catering/hospitality, merchandising, match day stewards etc.etc…
I don’t recall exactly when he did this, sometime around 2011.
So what happened is that the commercial revenue dropped by ~£10M, but, running costs also dropped by the same amount (which was kind of a clue as to the fact that they weren’t profitable).
Since then, commercial revenue has doubled (costs have remained much the same, which means it’s pure profit)
I appreciate that this comes across as pro MA (toon22 is gonna have a field day)
I’m not in any way supporting Ashley as NUFC owner – just saying that when it comes to squeezing operational efficiencies……he’s very good
………………………………………..
You absolute shill, but we all knew that. The place name gives it away 😉
Appreciate the explanation as like I say, I don’t know anything about business and accounts etc. Just things don’t add up for me. Like when we were in the championship, why did Leeds and Norwich have similar or greater commercial income. For someone very good he isn’t maximising the amount of commercial income the club can make. I get the operational efficiencies you’re talking about.
So when the next accounts come out in a few months, I would expect to either see his apparent loan paid back considerably or we have a lot of money sitting in the bank. Would that be right? Ashley is also know for ‘creative accounting’ too.