Ailing Benitez still searching for way to cure Toon’s ills
AFTER a ninth stressful, mediocre, winless, luckless game Rafa Benitez spluttered through the inquest nursing a cold and looking ill.
Only Newcastle could appoint a world-class manager, create hope and momentum, then squander it and grind him to this miserable point.
His terse comment that “time is short now” suggests something has to give.
Stay or go, he is already beaten down. Reputation dented. Newcastle adrift at the bottom of the Premier League.
Beaten by a dreadful owner who has failed to nurture his skills and experience, and be ambitious.
Beaten by chronic under-investment, certainly. Where has all the £123million TV cash and transfer profit gone?
But also beaten by an early season scarred by politics, negativity about his squad’s prospects, and a reluctance to shake up a losing team.
Only three top-flight teams in history had lost all five of their opening home games until Brighton’s Beram Kayal grabbed a firsthalf winner and Toon made it four. It is their worst start in the top division of English football since 1899. Geordies, pray for a repeat of that season – they won seven in a row and climbed to 13th.
Can this side muster 36 points in the remaining 29 games? A third relegation of Mike Ashley’s 11-year ownership looms. They had been relegated only four times in the previous 117 years.
Does Ashley, who watched his fourth consecutive game, have the appetite for a gamble? Relegation equals millions wiped off his current £300m sale price, so maybe.
A spark is needed. The options are all costly. Sack Benitez, pay £5m compensation. Appoint a new boss, costly contract, and £50m needed to spend in January.
Or let Rafa sweat it out and increasingly shoulder criticism. That is the most likely immediate plan. Hope for a win. Have a look at it again in mid-November. Maybe Benitez’s search for a new job will be successful and he will walk away, as his closest coaching confidants advised in the summer.
Skipper Jamaal Lascelles fronted up and said: “As players we have to get together and talk about it because we need to be more clinical in the box.
“We’ve a squad of players who care and it hurts them when we lose. They aren’t players who aren’t bothered. It’s just not happening for us. That will change.”
Asked if Newcastle needed to change training – more intensity perhaps – Lascelles paused then added: “That’s a difficult one to answer. Everybody is looking at each other, trying to find the answer. We don’t quite have it at the moment.”