I DON’T LIKE MONDAYS

Rafa orders Toon to end their MNF jinx which has seen them lose TEN matches in a row at the start of the week

RAFA BENITEZ has ordered Newcastle to smash their Monday Night Football jinx.

The Geordies have lost their last 10 Premier League games shown live on Mondays, dating back six years.

They have also failed to score in their last seven matches played in that TV slot, but Toon boss Benitez said: “The records are there to be broken, so we have to change that. That’s it.”

Newcastle travel to Burnley’s Turf Moor on the back of two wins, with the Clarets without a victory in five games.

The last time the Magpies won on a Monday night was against Wigan in December 2012. Their last draw was at Everton the previous September.

Benitez said: “We will score in this one and we will win and that’s it. We will change the stats.

“Maybe in the past they were difficult teams to play against. We will do well.

“I don’t worry about it. I’ve told you – you change the manager, you change the players, you change the environment, you change the league, you change everything. The record is fine, but it doesn’t matter.

“How many of these players

vwere playing the first game when they lost? How many of the Burnley players were playing? Was the league the same or was it different? The numbers change every year. Making an issue out of it doesn’t change too much.

“Solution? To score and to win. That’s it. We will try to do that.”

Benitez revealed he is not superstitious, but has had to endure some jinx-breaking antics in the past – including at Italian side Napoli.

He said: “I was in Italy and everything was like ‘don’t do this because we lost’, or ‘we have to wear this because we won’, and in the end you don’t know what to do or wear! At Napoli especially there were just a lot of superstitions about things.

“There was a circle that we were doing, holding hands in the dressing room, because the chairman wanted to do it before the games. We did a circle and we won so we carried on.”

“Then they lost again, and cancelled the hand-holding.”

Asked if he would revive “the circle” with Toon owner Mike Ashley in the dressing room at Turf Moor, Benitez added: “Hopefully, we don’t need to.”