Newcastle United Discussion

[The Artful Dodger]

I do think this Rafa the 'Rebel' thing gets overplayed, he had pretty appalling owners at Liverpool too but only ended up going when he'd taken them out of the top 4. He is a good manager and deserves more respect from the British media but he's a company man like most of them are.

[Dave]

On a side note welcome back @Julio Geordio

[Honey Honey]

No protests in the ground today until the last few minutes. Everyone with the players and Rafa in game time.

There was a peaceful protest with a few hundred people outside Sports Direct on Northumberland street and they gave a bag of chocolate bars to the Sports Direct staff as an apology and to say no hard feelings 

[Julio Geordio]

22 minutes ago, The Palace Fan said:

On a side note welcome back @Julio Geordio

Thanks a lot

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Harvsky said:

No protests in the ground today until the last few minutes. Everyone with the players and Rafa in game time.

There was a peaceful protest with a few hundred people outside Sports Direct on Northumberland street and they gave a bag of chocolate bars to the Sports Direct staff as an apology and to say no hard feelings 

Shearer on match of the day "at least we know where the money has gone" Ashley is a disgrace needs to fuck of now 

[Honey Honey]

 

 

[Honey Honey]

Net spend since promotion:

Brighton -£118.9m

Huddersfield -£75.3m

Newcastle +£0.7m

Thank fuck we've got Rafa.

Supporters are asking a simple question. Where's the money gone? Why don't they answer that question? They hold us in such contempt that they won't entertain talking to us. We have no choice but to fight such arrogant distant ownership of our communal club. Our chief executive sat in his seat shaking his head when we chanted for Ashley to fuck off. If you are so right and we are so wrong answer our question scumbag cuntbag ballbag wanker. The anger was allowed to build and build and build because of their silence and contempt for us. The PR advisor is telling them it will all blow over by September so say nothing. 

Meanwhile we have to put up with tosser pundits saying what we have done is fine and Rafa should shut up. They are just braindead docile fucks. Tell us where the money is and then we can all judge how the club is being ran properly with evidence.

[Bluewolf]

Just thinking that with our game coming up and judging by the way he played for you at the weekend it might be worth Chelsea breaking their normal rule and allow Kenedy to play against us...  

[Julio Geordio]

On 21/08/2018 at 14:57, Bluewolf said:

Just thinking that with our game coming up and judging by the way he played for you at the weekend it might be worth Chelsea breaking their normal rule and allow Kenedy to play against us...  

Atsu will probably play and he couldn't trap a bag of cement

[Honey Honey]

The club have cancelled tommorows fans forum as managing director Lee Charnley doesn't want to face any supporter questions. 

Coward.

[Bluewolf]

1 hour ago, Harvsky said:

The club have cancelled tommorows fans forum as managing director Lee Charnley doesn't want to face any supporter questions. 

Coward.

Takes the piss... So much for the club interacting with the fans... As soon as it gets a bit tough they are off like a shot hiding away somewhere.. 

[Honey Honey]

3 minutes ago, Bluewolf said:

Takes the piss... So much for the club interacting with the fans... As soon as it gets a bit tough they are off like a shot hiding away somewhere.. 

It's got to the point where a local MP is trying to petition parliament to force the FA to make transparency a regulatory requirement of fit and proper. 

 

[Stan]

heard on the radio earlier and mentioned it in the EFL Cup thread - Matt Ritchie and Jamaal Lascelles had a training ground 'bust-up' and allegedly had to be separated by teammates.

@Harvsky @Rafa Beneathus @Julio Geordio Do you know what happened? 

[Honey Honey]

14 minutes ago, Stan said:

heard on the radio earlier and mentioned it in the EFL Cup thread - Matt Ritchie and Jamaal Lascelles had a training ground 'bust-up' and allegedly had to be separated by teammates.

@Harvsky @Rafa Beneathus @Julio Geordio Do you know what happened? 

They've had one before. Club used their local mouth piece journo to say it's nothing serious. 

Perhaps more interestingly though, there's someone on the inside leaking things to Craig Hope at the Daily Mail. To do so you'd have to have an agenda against the team, against Rafa.

[Honey Honey]

 

[Dr. Gonzo]

The latest excerpts from King Kev's latest book re: his final days as Newcastle manager are very interesting. Paints Mike Ashley as either incompetent or dishonest, you get a really bad impression of Dennis Wise, and Keegan looks pretty believable & to have a lot of integrity as the arbitration panel sided with him.

[Stan]

Benitez charged for comments about Andre Marriner.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/45643177

Quote

 

Newcastle United manager Rafael Benitez has been charged by the Football Association over comments he made about referee Andre Marriner before Saturday's 0-0 draw at Crystal Palace.

The Spaniard had said he was surprised Palace forward Wilfried Zaha had not been punished for saying he needed greater protection from referees.

In the pre-match interview, he added: "I have a lot of confidence with Andre Marriner. He has a lot of experience, even if his record with our players is not that great in terms of red cards."

He has until 18:00 BST on Friday, 28 September to respond to the charge.

 

 

[Honey Honey]

Fair enough (charge depending). No one should be allowed to comment before the game on a referee, positive or negative. I know the FA will only punish negative.

[Bluewolf]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/45678196

Michael Owen still remains the clubs most expensive signing at 16MIll and that was 13 years ago....

Interesting video about the club from the fans point of view.. 

[Honey Honey]

Lascelles signs 6 year contract in exchange for publicly calling Ashley a nice man. Social media backlash at Lascelles.

The next day the papers report a Newcastle fan saw Ashley in a restaurant in North London, went over and told Ashley he was a parasite and should get out of the club and city, Ashley's response was to call him a prick and threaten to knock him out.

[Stan]

In response to the McCann's search fund being boosted...

 

 

[CaaC (John)+]

@Harvsky what do you think? I have never liked the owner Ashley and never will but I do think Raffa is flogging a dead horse at the moment thank's to Ashley.

 

Rafael Benitez: Does Newcastle Utd manager have St James' Park future?

2 hours ago | Newcastle

Guillem Balague

BBC Sport Column

After consecutive wins and seven points out of a possible nine, people are finally beginning to believe Rafael Benitez's claims that his Newcastle United side are not going to be relegated.

But even if he does manage to keep them up, will it be enough to ensure he remains at St James' Park?

If he does maintain the momentum and ensures Premier League status, it will be an achievement to rival any of the managerial successes crafted over a long and illustrious career.

Can Benitez's vision be realised at Newcastle?

A victim of his own success by finishing 10th in the Premier League the season after winning promotion, you wonder if it would not have been better, having steered the family saloon to a mid-place finish in football's equivalent of a grand prix, to leave while he was ahead.

Had they beaten a virtually already relegated West Brom at home in their penultimate game of last season they would have finished in an almost unimaginable eighth place. It was a stressful season, and in the summer lots of doubts surfaced about how much the club was going to back the Spaniard's ambitious vision.

The spurious and scurrilous assertions that he only took - and remains in - the job for the money are as outrageous as they are inaccurate. The fact is Benitez was lured to Newcastle with the same dreams and aspirations as just about every single Newcastle fan. He, like they, wanted to wake the "sleeping giant".

For "sleeping", read comatose. Rip van Winkle, who slept for a mere 20 years, is practically an insomniac by comparison. Apart from the Championship and the kind of farce that was the Intertoto Cup, the last piece of silverware to sit in the club's trophy room was the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup from way back in 1969.

He did not come to the club with a plan to merely avoid relegation. He wanted to win, to compete.

And yet in the footballing-mad metropolis that is Tyneside, expectations are high. Unnaturally so, really, with the perception that a top-10 finish ought to be the bare minimum for a club with the facilities and fanbase that they enjoy.

If Benitez had merely been there for the money, he could name his price and leave for China tomorrow. But for the Spanish manager that would mean failure, quitting, and one thing Benitez is not, and never has been, is a quitter.

Ongoing money issues - can Benitez and Ashley find common ground?

It is about money, of course, but not for Benitez himself.

He needs it for the club, and not just on new players but also for much-needed investment in the academy, the lifeblood of the club that in the long term can help to raise it from its slumbers.

Backing on both fronts is conspicuous by its absence and much will depend on whether or not money is spent in the winter transfer window.

If it is not forthcoming then, despite Benitez's claim that Newcastle will survive, there is a very good chance that they will be relegated and that he will be sacked - or even move on.

It would then fall to the owner, Mike Ashley, to explain to the fans just why he had dispensed with the services of a manager who maximised the potential of a side despite having to watch on helplessly as the 'family silver' was sold off around him and replaced, largely, with borrowed or cut-price cutlery.

Relegation to the Championship at the end of 2015-16 led to a flurry of transfer activity and between July and August the club cashed in on quality players, with Moussa Sissoko (Tottenham), Georginio Wijnaldum (Liverpool), Andros Townsend (Crystal Palace), Daryl Janmaat (Watford), Remy Cabella (Marseille) and Papiss Cisse (Shandong Luneng) all leaving.

Cheick Tiote, who died in June 2017, and Fabricio Coloccini were given away presumably to reduce the wage bill.

About £87m worth of talent was sold, with about £57m re-invested on players including Dwight Gayle (Crystal Palace), Matt Ritchie (Bournemouth), Matz Sels (Gent), Grant Hanley (Blackburn Rovers), Ciaran Clark (Aston Villa) and Daryl Murphy (Ipswich). Those were quality players for the target that season - to be promoted.

Despite the loss of quality, Newcastle won the Championship and won promotion alongside Brighton and Huddersfield.

Benitez's reward for gaining promotion and Newcastle's idea of preparing for a life in the Premier League was to have a net spend of about a third of what Huddersfield and Brighton spent in summer 2017. In fact, the net spend of about £20m still put them well in credit on transfer dealing during Rafa's rule and streets behind the vast majority of Premier League clubs.

Ashley's claim that he would "spend every penny generated" on improving the club has - to date - translated into a 2018-19 season in which he has made another net profit on the transfer market of about £7.5m.

What happens in the winter window will define the direction Benitez's relationship with Newcastle takes. The impression local observers have is that he would probably not extend his contract unless they spend and Newcastle say they will not spend unless the manager commits to the club.

It is not a western-style stand-off between Ashley and Benitez, though. It is a matter of vision and the possibility of a project - fundamentally nobody is asking the businessman to change how he runs his business, but also not to alter agreed parameters.

Witnesses at St James' Park have seen the owner enjoying his recent visits to the ground, sharing time with the manager and players. It might be a good time to find common ground.

From Valencia to Real Madrid - Benitez has been here before

Ashley's promises to Benitez on spending to strengthen the side will feel all too familiar - and hollow - to the 58-year-old, who more often than not gets the targets agreed at the start of projects but has to suffer the moving of the goal posts by owners and presidents.

In 2004, and having won two La Liga titles in three seasons with Valencia, he left the club after the board signed winger Fabian Canobbio rather than Samuel Eto'o, the player he had asked for.

"I was hoping for a sofa and they've brought me a lamp," he remarked.

But that was nothing compared to the debacle that awaited him at Liverpool, where the American duo Tom Hicks and George Gillett contrived to steer the club into a perilous position, with administration a possibility before they sold it in 2010.

There were more broken promises about rebuilding and so on at Inter Milan, where he signed and improved players like Philippe Coutinho - one of his great enjoyments - but where he did not get the players he chose and who were agreed with the ownership (Javier Mascherano and Dirk Kuyt).

There followed the universal and unwarranted loathing by almost everyone at Chelsea, despite bringing home the Europa League, before becoming yet another victim of the player power that permeates the Real Madrid dressing room when he took charge at the Bernabeu.

In such company, Newcastle and Ashley must have initially felt to Benitez like a philanthropic breath of fresh air.

Perhaps he should have known better.

A new contract on the table - but will he sign it?

A look at Benitez's statistics reveals an interesting story.

Despite having recorded Newcastle's worst 10-game start to a season since the 19th century, back-to-back wins means they are up to 14th in the table. For the time being at least, they can look upwards.

Tottenham are the only side from the top six to have beaten Benitez's Newcastle by more than two goals (August 2017) and in his past eight Premier League games against the top six, he has either won (twice) or lost by a single goal.

All of which means one thing: Newcastle are close but clearly not close enough.

Benitez's contract comes to an end next summer. As it stands he has a renewal offer on the table, but to be signed the club have to show enough commitment with a project that should be around improving facilities and results, not just survival.

Should Salomon Rondon - on a year's loan from West Brom - continue to score for his new club then he may dig them out of a hole, guarantee survival and once again Ashley will believe his approach has been vindicated. With Gayle having gone in the opposite direction to the Baggies, the two clubs should be able to sit down and work out a deal to suit all parties.

But it will probably take considerably more than that to ensure Benitez will be committing his future to the city that has adopted him as one of their own - and that is a real shame.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/46279098

[Honey Honey]

On 23/11/2018 at 09:05, CaaC - John said:

@Harvsky what do you think? I have never liked the owner Ashley and never will but I do think Raffa is flogging a dead horse at the moment thank's to Ashley.

 

Rafael Benitez: Does Newcastle Utd manager have St James' Park future?

2 hours ago | Newcastle

Guillem Balague

BBC Sport Column

After consecutive wins and seven points out of a possible nine, people are finally beginning to believe Rafael Benitez's claims that his Newcastle United side are not going to be relegated.

But even if he does manage to keep them up, will it be enough to ensure he remains at St James' Park?

If he does maintain the momentum and ensures Premier League status, it will be an achievement to rival any of the managerial successes crafted over a long and illustrious career.

Can Benitez's vision be realised at Newcastle?

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

A victim of his own success by finishing 10th in the Premier League the season after winning promotion, you wonder if it would not have been better, having steered the family saloon to a mid-place finish in football's equivalent of a grand prix, to leave while he was ahead.

Had they beaten a virtually already relegated West Brom at home in their penultimate game of last season they would have finished in an almost unimaginable eighth place. It was a stressful season, and in the summer lots of doubts surfaced about how much the club was going to back the Spaniard's ambitious vision.

The spurious and scurrilous assertions that he only took - and remains in - the job for the money are as outrageous as they are inaccurate. The fact is Benitez was lured to Newcastle with the same dreams and aspirations as just about every single Newcastle fan. He, like they, wanted to wake the "sleeping giant".

For "sleeping", read comatose. Rip van Winkle, who slept for a mere 20 years, is practically an insomniac by comparison. Apart from the Championship and the kind of farce that was the Intertoto Cup, the last piece of silverware to sit in the club's trophy room was the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup from way back in 1969.

He did not come to the club with a plan to merely avoid relegation. He wanted to win, to compete.

And yet in the footballing-mad metropolis that is Tyneside, expectations are high. Unnaturally so, really, with the perception that a top-10 finish ought to be the bare minimum for a club with the facilities and fanbase that they enjoy.

If Benitez had merely been there for the money, he could name his price and leave for China tomorrow. But for the Spanish manager that would mean failure, quitting, and one thing Benitez is not, and never has been, is a quitter.

Ongoing money issues - can Benitez and Ashley find common ground?

It is about money, of course, but not for Benitez himself.

He needs it for the club, and not just on new players but also for much-needed investment in the academy, the lifeblood of the club that in the long term can help to raise it from its slumbers.

Backing on both fronts is conspicuous by its absence and much will depend on whether or not money is spent in the winter transfer window.

If it is not forthcoming then, despite Benitez's claim that Newcastle will survive, there is a very good chance that they will be relegated and that he will be sacked - or even move on.

It would then fall to the owner, Mike Ashley, to explain to the fans just why he had dispensed with the services of a manager who maximised the potential of a side despite having to watch on helplessly as the 'family silver' was sold off around him and replaced, largely, with borrowed or cut-price cutlery.

Relegation to the Championship at the end of 2015-16 led to a flurry of transfer activity and between July and August the club cashed in on quality players, with Moussa Sissoko (Tottenham), Georginio Wijnaldum (Liverpool), Andros Townsend (Crystal Palace), Daryl Janmaat (Watford), Remy Cabella (Marseille) and Papiss Cisse (Shandong Luneng) all leaving.

Cheick Tiote, who died in June 2017, and Fabricio Coloccini were given away presumably to reduce the wage bill.

About £87m worth of talent was sold, with about £57m re-invested on players including Dwight Gayle (Crystal Palace), Matt Ritchie (Bournemouth), Matz Sels (Gent), Grant Hanley (Blackburn Rovers), Ciaran Clark (Aston Villa) and Daryl Murphy (Ipswich). Those were quality players for the target that season - to be promoted.

Despite the loss of quality, Newcastle won the Championship and won promotion alongside Brighton and Huddersfield.

Benitez's reward for gaining promotion and Newcastle's idea of preparing for a life in the Premier League was to have a net spend of about a third of what Huddersfield and Brighton spent in summer 2017. In fact, the net spend of about £20m still put them well in credit on transfer dealing during Rafa's rule and streets behind the vast majority of Premier League clubs.

Ashley's claim that he would "spend every penny generated" on improving the club has - to date - translated into a 2018-19 season in which he has made another net profit on the transfer market of about £7.5m.

What happens in the winter window will define the direction Benitez's relationship with Newcastle takes. The impression local observers have is that he would probably not extend his contract unless they spend and Newcastle say they will not spend unless the manager commits to the club.

It is not a western-style stand-off between Ashley and Benitez, though. It is a matter of vision and the possibility of a project - fundamentally nobody is asking the businessman to change how he runs his business, but also not to alter agreed parameters.

Witnesses at St James' Park have seen the owner enjoying his recent visits to the ground, sharing time with the manager and players. It might be a good time to find common ground.

From Valencia to Real Madrid - Benitez has been here before

Ashley's promises to Benitez on spending to strengthen the side will feel all too familiar - and hollow - to the 58-year-old, who more often than not gets the targets agreed at the start of projects but has to suffer the moving of the goal posts by owners and presidents.

In 2004, and having won two La Liga titles in three seasons with Valencia, he left the club after the board signed winger Fabian Canobbio rather than Samuel Eto'o, the player he had asked for.

"I was hoping for a sofa and they've brought me a lamp," he remarked.

But that was nothing compared to the debacle that awaited him at Liverpool, where the American duo Tom Hicks and George Gillett contrived to steer the club into a perilous position, with administration a possibility before they sold it in 2010.

There were more broken promises about rebuilding and so on at Inter Milan, where he signed and improved players like Philippe Coutinho - one of his great enjoyments - but where he did not get the players he chose and who were agreed with the ownership (Javier Mascherano and Dirk Kuyt).

There followed the universal and unwarranted loathing by almost everyone at Chelsea, despite bringing home the Europa League, before becoming yet another victim of the player power that permeates the Real Madrid dressing room when he took charge at the Bernabeu.

In such company, Newcastle and Ashley must have initially felt to Benitez like a philanthropic breath of fresh air.

Perhaps he should have known better.

A new contract on the table - but will he sign it?

A look at Benitez's statistics reveals an interesting story.

Despite having recorded Newcastle's worst 10-game start to a season since the 19th century, back-to-back wins means they are up to 14th in the table. For the time being at least, they can look upwards.

Tottenham are the only side from the top six to have beaten Benitez's Newcastle by more than two goals (August 2017) and in his past eight Premier League games against the top six, he has either won (twice) or lost by a single goal.

All of which means one thing: Newcastle are close but clearly not close enough.

Benitez's contract comes to an end next summer. As it stands he has a renewal offer on the table, but to be signed the club have to show enough commitment with a project that should be around improving facilities and results, not just survival.

Should Salomon Rondon - on a year's loan from West Brom - continue to score for his new club then he may dig them out of a hole, guarantee survival and once again Ashley will believe his approach has been vindicated. With Gayle having gone in the opposite direction to the Baggies, the two clubs should be able to sit down and work out a deal to suit all parties.

But it will probably take considerably more than that to ensure Benitez will be committing his future to the city that has adopted him as one of their own - and that is a real shame.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/46279098

His contract is up at the end of the season and I expect he will part ways then. He's probably only hanging around still for the reason he joined. He's addicted to football and wants to settle down in England.

[Machado]

 

[Honey Honey]

Even Dummett's dad didn't think he was good enough in the early days to be fair. Might be fake news but I have heard stories that he used to be critical of him when sitting in the stands.

In the early days many people wanted him to be centre back, which he was at youth level. I also don't think any fan thought he was good enough.

Even now I'd keep him but he isn't top half and looks out of his depth on occasion.