Rafa: We don’t need to sell before buying

RAFA BENITEZ IS SUFFERING HIS WORST RUN AS NEWCASTLE UNITED BOSS – BUT HE’S STILL HAD TOUGHER TIMES AT ST JAMES’ PARK, WRITES LEE RYDER

RAFA Benitez is experiencing a tough spell as Newcastle United boss after a poor run of results in the Premier League.

In short, Newcastle haven’t won since the clocks went back in October, and the sequence of games the Magpies knew they needed to get points in before the more daunting festive fixtures will have come and gone by tomorrow night after the Everton game.

After winning only once in the last 11 games and picking up just one point from the last 21 available, a man of Benitez’s vast experience doesn’t need to be told that a minority of the crowd are now questioning him.

But he will only focus on what he knows he can control.

Social media accounts will be muted, TV pundits will be ignored and players will be told to cancel out the noise around them until they can climb back to a more sturdy position.

Benitez told me recently that TV pundits will always be right because they are paid to point out mistakes after they’ve already happened – a relatively easier job than his.

The Spaniard knows he has to make decisions before anybody knows if they are right or wrong.

He almost got it right on Saturday evening against Leicester when opting for Joselu and Dwight Gayle in attack, and the pair combined well to come close to netting what would have been a great point.

Instead, following a last-minute winner for the Foxes he was left to face up to the doom and gloom in the press conference at St James’ Park.

Before he set off down the corridor to do his media duties he had told his players to remember the good things that had happened against Leicester.

He wasn’t too harsh on his team, and many of them accepted afterwards that they have to get a grip on the silly mistakes that are costing them so dearly. Benitez had already dusted himself down by Sunday morning and started looking at DVDs of the next opponents Everton before watching the Merseyside derby. Regardless of the poor run of results, he’s actually been in a tougher situation as Newcastle boss, and his first few weeks in charge at St James’ Park weren’t exactly a cake-walk. His first month at the club was extremely difficult and it took him four games to net his first victory as manager. Benitez was also staring down the barrel of a gun when Sunderland were leading 1-0 at St James’ during that month, but he managed Joselu and Dwight Gayle combined well

to net a point and avoid derby-day defeat.

Those two months saw Benitez try to fight what was effectively a lost battle against relegation, though, and those who know the Toon boss well will tell you how much dropping into the Championship hurt.

That’s because back then Benitez wouldn’t accept any talk of relegation – even with a few games left to play he believed that the drop could still be avoided when many others had written off the prospect of survival.

In the end, Newcastle narrowly went down, but Benitez stayed on for more and turned the situation around by leading the club back to the Premier League.

He now faces another difficult run of games – but unlike 2016 when he came in with 10 games left, Benitez has 22 games to steer Newcastle away from the choppy waters around the relegation zone.

Benitez has made it clear that Newcastle aren’t evenly matched