Crucial that Rafa gets the finances he needs

SQUAD NEEDS EIGHT TO 10 NEW PLAYERS BROUGHT IN

RAFA BENITEZ is to meet with Mike Ashley this coming week to thrash out their plans for a new season in the Premier League.

It’s an absolutely crucial gettogether which will determine United’s future.

I urge Ashley to temporarily put to one side his concerns over the tax fraud investigations and back Rafa to the hilt otherwise his club really doesn’t have much of a future.

There is a massive amount of work to be done and it will cost big, big bucks.

I reckon Newcastle need eight to 10 new players – perhaps a couple more just to bolster the squad as back-up men.

If Rafa were to be given £60m that would only be £6m per player for 10 and what are you going to get that is PL quality for that?

Let me give you my summing up of the current United squad – and remember that Benitez assembled it purely to play in the Championship and get the Mags out at the first time of asking, which he has done. I think we’re all right in goal with Rob Elliot, Karl Darlow, Tim Krul and Freddie Woodman available. One could even be sold.

Now we come to the back four. I like DeAndre Yedlin, who I can see playing in the Premier League, but he is United’s only defender with pace.

Jamaal Lascelles and Grant Hanley would make good back-up rather than regular first-teamers and Ciaran Clark is fine. However, Paul Dummett gets caught out too many times and gets sucked under the ball.

Lascelles has a lot to learn. He’s not the finished article and he has to get on with his football education.

Jonjo Shelvey is obviously going to play, although I want to see him knuckle down and show a little discipline. Isaac Hayden is young and can learn from the bench but I will be surprised if Jack Colback is here next season.

Matt Ritchie is sound and can start in the Premier League on one flank but Rafa needs to buy on the other.

Yoan Gouffran can take his free, as can Vurnon Anita, and Christian Atsu has to be sent back to Chelsea.

Mo Diame will stay no doubt although he worries me – he does something terrific and then gives the ball away – while Ayoze Perez will be a better player in the PL than the Championship.

Now we come to up top, which is my speciality.

Aleksandar Mitrovic is a waste of time because he hasn’t learned a solitary single thing – cash in on him although you won’t get £13m – and Daryl Murphy is too one-paced and too old for the top division.

I think both he and Rafa know that. He has done the job he was bought to do.

Dwight Gayle I would keep but for the bench. Although pacy, which is good, he could physically find things tough and has a worry in his mind over his hamstrings.

So to sum things up – I reckon Rafa needs TWO strikers, a winger, two midfielders including a playmaker, and three defenders. That’s just for the team not the squad.

There is certainly a big building programme to be done and Rafa needs great support.

I congratulate him, his staff, and the players on clinching automatic promotion with two games to go but to take this squad into the Premier League would be a huge folly and Rafa knows it.

We can only hope that Ashley and Lee Charnley recognise that too.