AND so the familiar dance goes on. Rafa Benitez wants guarantees of transfer funds before committing to a new contract, and Mike Ashley prevaricates while fans seethe that their owner could treat their greatest asset, the manager, with such recklessness.
Reputations can change very quickly in football, but it shouldn’t be forgotten that before Newcastle, the last club Benitez managed that didn’t expect to be in the Champions League was Tenerife, and he left them in 2001. Put bluntly, his recent record far outstrips that of Newcastle and if he were to leave, he would find no shortage of jobs that offered at the very least Europa League football. Newcastle need Benitez more than Benitez needs Newcastle.
That it’s got to this point is ludicrous. Benitez’s contract expires on June 30. Even if he is given significant funds – which probably means a minimum of £50m for transfers, plus a commensurate increase in the budget available of wages – and does sign a new contract, the delay has cost Newcastle.
What’s the last sentence we’ll hear before Armageddon? I nominate: “Rafa Benitez is seeking assurances from Newcastle owner Mike Ashley….”
— Paul Hayward (@_PaulHayward) April 24, 2019
Well-run clubs decide their transfer targets months if not years in advance; how is it possible to do that seriously when nobody knows who the manager will be or how much money will be available? So significant a factor is the identity of the manager that it led Manchester United to appoint Ole Gunnar Solskjaer permanently at in March when they could have waited another two months (and perhaps now wish they had).
The past three years have been characterised by persistent Benitez grumbling about funds. And while Newcastle fans – and, to be fair, the wider world – look at the club and think of what might be with proper investment, how justified his complaints are depend a lot on what promises were made when he signed his initial contract in 2016.
Ashley, fairly clearly, is not a good owner in that his ambitions are limited and he seems to see the club as a vehicle for the advancement of his sports shops rather than as an institution to be cherished in its own right but, equally, there are many worse.
It’s one thing to keep the budget on a tight rein, though, quite another to be as bafflingly penny-pinching as Ashley, particularly when being so seems to invite the risk of relegation. There is no guarantee that Salomon Rondon, mightily impressive as he has been this season, will make his loan move from West Brom permanent – a situation that has taken on an element of farce.
If West Brom remain in the Championship, and they will be in the play-offs, Rondon will cost £16.5m, but if they go up, that fee will increase to £20.5m. West Brom’s leading scorer this season is Dwight Gayle, who joined on loan Newcastle last summer after they increased his contract to persuade him to leave. Newcastle are paying extra to a player whose success may lead to an extra £4m fee for a player they want to sign effective to replace him.
#nufc fans: "Rafa Benitez, we want you to stay, Rafa Benitez, we want you to stay."
— Lee Ryder (@lee_ryder) April 27, 2019
Ashley’s stubbornness is also what’s provoked the stand-off with Benitez and, again, seems self-defeating. Benitez is enormously popular with fans and clearly feels a bond with the club – if he didn’t, he would probably already have left. Respect for him has perhaps tempered some of the anti-Ashley feeling. And yet his contract expires in two months: an attractive offer from a club that could offer Champions League football could very easily lure him away.
Benitez turned 59 a fortnight ago; he could hardly be blamed if he decided that he doesn’t have time for another season or more of wrangling over limited funds in a relegation fight.
Ashley hasn’t spoken publicly about the negotiations, which are being carried out by the club’s managing director Lee Charnley, since December, Benitez has said that he submitted a list of requests for next season a month ago but has not heard back. Charnley speaks of three- and five-year plans, but given how things have gone, it’s hardly surprising if Benitez were sceptical of them.
He believes that with moderate investment he could make Newcastle a regular top eight side. There’s no obvious reason why they shouldn’t be able to compete with Watford or Leicester. The present front three of Rondon, Ayoze Perez and Miguel Almiron work very well together and give a glimpse of how the future may look.
But even the way the negotiations have dragged on must make Benitez wonder whether it’s really all worth the hassle.
