The 52-year-old John Carver was out of his depth when he took over Newcastle from the departed Alan Pardew back in early 2015.

After losing eight Premier League games in a row we just survived relegation on that very last day when our lads turned up and walloped West Ham at home 2-0 to save our Premier League status.

In the final 11 games of the season we amassed just 4 points – and 3 of them were in the last game.

🙁

But Lee Charnley followed up his disastrous appointment of John Carver with another terrible one when he then appointed  Steve McClaren just 16 days after he had lost his job as Derby County manager.

And the rest is history.

John Carver – 52 year-old former Newcastle United manager

Newcastle didn’t learn from the 2014-2015 season and we were relegated a year ago.

And in fact the consecutive reigns of John Carver and Steve McClaren were the worst 15 months in our Premier League history – here’s their joint Premier League record.

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But Rafa brought us straight back up and things are really looking up at the moment,  although we hope we can sign some players fairly soon.

John was asked on talkSPORT today whether he thinks Rafa Benitez will get the backing promised from owner Mike Ashley this summer:

“Absolutely. One million per cent because I know where the football club is now. It’s in a sound position.”

“If you think of the assets, and it was clever business last season by Rafa, you look at the assets they’ve got there and they’ve got a lot of good Championship players.”

“And there will be sides in the Championship knocking on Newcastle’s door to try and get them because they all want to get back in the Premier League.”

“So they’ve got five or six players who are salable assets there and that will be extra money to go into the coffers along with the money they’ve received from promotion and the money they’ve made in the past.”

“I think there is money there to be spent for sure. I’m delighted to see how they’ve changed their policy and allowing the manager to pick the players. There’s even less on the staff now to make those decisions.”

Those are actually decent points made by John today.

Rafa has changed the old and unsuccessful policy because of his vast experience in football and his strength of character.

While we are a bit concerned Newcastle have only signed one player so far this summer we are still confident Rafa will get the players he needs to get – with the help of Lee Charnley.

We just need to be more willing to spend the money and maybe more than we had initially bargained for.

Comments welcome.