Lack of progress off the pitch hurting Rafa
NEWCASTLE United will park the bus at the Etihad Stadium this weekend, and while the tactic isn’t popular with scores of fans, you have to wonder if Rafa Benitez has any choice against Pep Guardiola’s side.
He doesn’t have pace in abundance to get at City at every opportunity and his top scorer has mustered just four goals this season.
Oh, and without an extra layer of protection in front of his back four he is risking being punished heavily by an unforgiving City attack.
Benitez has spoken about the “short blanket” already this season and it couldn’t be more appropriate.
He said: “When you have a short blanket, if you pull it to your face, your feet are cold, if you cover your feet, your top half is cold.”
Guardiola can call on world-class talent in every position, while Benitez is making ends meet with players who struggled to beat sides like Ipswich Town and Birmingham City towards the end of last season.
Trips to the Etihad haven’t exactly been fun for Newcastle fans in recent years either.
The United faithful have suffered some hammerings at this venue before including two 4-0s, a 6-1 and a 5-0 – and that was before Guardiola put his stamp on the Citizens.
Benitez admitted earlier in the season he would love to be able to compete with managers like Guardiola and Jose Mourinho again on a level playing field someday.
Well, that day certainly isn’t in the next game and Benitez has had to rally his troops again this week knowing that he is facing the prospect of naming an XI that featured heavily in the Championship last season.
In fairness to this group of players they have got their heads down and worked this season and this is a very different squad to the one that went down in 2009 and 2016.
Were Newcastle to get relegated this season it wouldn’t be because players have sulked and not gave their all because they weren’t up for the battle.
Benitez could have come out this term, said he wasn’t interested in excuses and that Newcastle should be able to deal with life in the Premier League.
But that would have been throwing his players to the wolves and he has been honest about the group’s abilities to compete at the top level.
Benitez stopped short of following David Moyes’ unwise words from last season when the Scot talked about a relegation battle as early as August.
Instead, Benitez has delicately encouraged his players and walked them through some difficult games.
But they don’t get much more difficult than this one.
You can get odds of 18/1 for United to get a win against Guardiola’s side and the mood is ominous going into the toughest away game of the season. Watching 10 men behind the ball isn’t fun, but this is the situation that Benitez has been forced into. Fly forward and you risk you picked off by a world-class frontline and perhaps the scariest stat going into this game is that centre-back Nicolás Otamendi has one more
Benitez is making ends meet with players who were struggling to beat sides like Ipswich and Birmingham Lee Ryder
goal than Newcastle’s top scorer Joselu.
If Newcastle and Benitez do manage to get a positive result at City they will rightly deserve the back page of every national newspaper this Sunday.
But if they do get it, they will have done it by frustrating the life out of Guardiola and his team.
It’s not what United fans want to see and it’s not how Benitez wants to play. But given his severe lack of resources, he has been pushed into a corner by the regime above him.