STAN COLLYMORE Make sure the iron fist doesn’t KO you, Rafa

COLLY FRANKLY SPEAKING

Follow us on Twitter: @peoplesport RAFA BENITEZ is a control freak — he has been since he was at Liverpool.

He didn’t like any meddling at Anfield, he didn’t want any interference in the academy, he wanted control over every aspect of the club and its direction, and that’s still the case now he’s at Newcastle.

He’s a benign dictator – and I actually really like that in a manager.

But I’m starting to worry that if he keeps picking fights with owners and chief execs at the rate he does then he may well start talking himself out of every club he goes to.

I remember writing last season that the Spaniard’s style was just what Newcastle United needed.

Genuine

They were down on their luck, down in the Championship, and needed somebody to pull them up by their bootstraps.

Benitez did just that and helped them back to the Premier League at the first attempt.

But at a club with genuine aspirations to kick on and return to the top flight’s top six, even top four, he is never going to be given the autonomy he craves.

Technical directors, directors of football and so on are part of the fabric of all the really big clubs these days – and plenty of smaller ones too. You only have to look at Txiki Begiristain and Ferran Soriano at Manchester City, and Michael Emenalo at Chelsea.

Yet Benitez seems to resent these kind of people on the basis that they interfere in the industry he knows very well.

He may have a point – in most cases he probably does know better. His record tells you that. But I do wonder if his feelings towards them stem in part from the fact he didn’t have a great playing career, that maybe he has some sort of mistrust of football people.

Maybe there’s an inferiority complex at work.

Maybe he feels that having football people in important roles undermines him.

It seems as if Rafa wants to be the head honcho over everybody and that he tests club owners to the point when they think ‘You know what, i t’s too much hassle’.

So he might need to be a little bit more pragmatic because there’s no reason why he can’t have his cake and eat it at Newcastle.

He can have his football narrative running all the way through the club from the seniors to the juniors.

And he has enough clout at Newcastle after creating such a feelgood factor on Tyneside to have a major influence on who the key people at the club should be.

But he needs to start thinking about teambuilding in his own image, putting in people he can trust to do the other jobs so he can focus on the first team rather than saying ‘ I want complete control over everything.’

That’s not how things work these days.

Take Arsene Wenger – the major criticism of him in recent years has been that he has been doing the same thing at Arsenal and that has caused them to stand still, if not go backwards.

Evolve

David Moyes is the same – it just hasn’t happened for him since he went to Manchester United. Actually, his managerial career has gone backwards.

Even if Sir Alex Fergusonerguson was getting the Newcastletle job now, or the Manchester ster United job having doneone great things at Aberdeen, he would d still have to accept there’s a chief exec and director of football. It’s the same for Benitez.

He has to evolve e and the question is ‘Can he do it?’

He can, but only if he is willing. .MY old Nottingham Forest team-mate Bryan Roy once took me into a meeting at Ajax with Frank De Boer, Dennis Bergkamp and Marc Overmars.

And if De Boer can bring to Crystal Palace the kind of thought, experience and style that he and his backroom staff showed that day then the Eagles will be a joy to watch.

Yohan Cabaye, Wilfried Zaha and Jason Puncheon will buy into his philosophy very well, although Christian Benteke may not be so well suited because you get the best out of him when you lump the ball to him quickly, which is contrary to the Ajax style.

To go from Sam Allardyce to De Boer in one jump, though, is massive and I can see a Pep Guardiola-esque season ahead for the Eagles.

A bright start, all is well... then something will get lost in translation.