Raf ride ahead
> Benitez is facing his toughest test
IF any player has different opinions, they can give their opinion,” said a solemn Rafa Benitez. “After we have to stick with the plan. That’s it. Everybody knows that.”
The Newcastle manager was talking about Jamaal Lascelles’ absence in the immediacy of a 2-1 defeat at home to Chelsea. Like much at the most northern league club in England at the minute, the game sparked yet more debate and controversy.
Lascelles has been the eyes and ears for Benitez inside a dressing room largely unrecognisable from the demotivated one the Spaniard inherited from Steve McClaren 29 months ago.
Lascelles brought unity with his honesty and integrity and Benitez guided a young footballer to excel in defence.
The pair have been good together and good for Newcastle United. The absence, which is said to have come because the player did not want to play on the right of the three central defenders used against Maurizio Sarri’s side, felt significant.
There was mention of an ankle injury, something the player himself alluded to in a tweet late on Sunday, when the dust still had not settled in the north east.
The penalty that led to Chelsea’s opening goal, came when Marcos Alonso got on the wrong side of Fabian Schar. There was a touch of the ball and a tangle of legs and arguments both for and against the decision of referee Paul Tierney.
It was not mentioned that was where the captain of the club would have been playing but for a disagreement on the training ground, where Benitez chose Federico Fernandez to marshal a back five that at times was a back nine. It was a day for defenders and shape, just not Lascelles, a player who had been the focus of interest from Chelsea during the summer.
Much criticism has followed for the style of Newcastle’s performance. Jamie Redknapp said it was “not football”, as Newcastle passed the ball 128 times to Chelsea’s 913.
Benitez was similarly without apology for the way his side played, perhaps reacting the most forcibly to any perceived questioning in the entirety of his time at the club when he dismissed the statistics that showed his side had just 19 per cent of possession.
“I remember a long time ago, I think it was when Guardiola was at Barcelona and they played against Atletico and they had 80% against 20% and they lost 2-0,” he said, curtly.
“Possession is now just for the TV for the stats. It means nothing. It means nothing. Possession means nothing.”
It is a strange mood in Tyneside, where the vast loyalty for Benitez and the job he has done wrestles most noticeably in the lack of noise inside the stadium to defensive displays. St James’ Park was quiet against Chelsea.
Even the Newcastle player Jacob Murphy wrote on his Instagram account, ‘not attractive,
but