Rafael Benitez's - with hindsight, utterly inevitable - departure from this blogger's beloved (though still, tragically, unsellable) Newcastle United will leave the long-suffering Toon Army nursing an acute and bitter sense of betrayal. And - if this is actually even possible - widen the already gaping chasm of outright loathing between themselves and the club's owner, Mike Ashley. Some Magpies supporters began Monday of this week publicising a 'Rafa Appreciation Week' as the clock ran down on Rafa The Gaffer's contract, due to expire on Sunday, only to end the day organising a, rather forlorn and utterly meaningless, 'protest' at the Sir Bobby Robson statue at St James' Park as Rafa prepared to clear out his desk. Only at Newcastle, dear blog reader. 'We have worked hard to extend Rafa's contract over a significant period of time. However, it has not been - and will not be - possible to reach an agreement with Rafa and his representatives,' the club claimed in a statement. One or two people even believed them. 'Rafa's coaching staff, Paco de Míguel Moreno, Antonio Gómez Perez and Mikel Antia, will also leave the club on 30 June. We would like to thank Rafa and his coaching team for their efforts over the last three years and their significant contribution to what has been collectively achieved.' The inclusion of the word 'collectively' was, understandably, met with utter derision on Tyneside. 'We would also like to thank our supporters, players and staff for their patience during a period of uncertainty.' One is sure that the vast majority of Newcastle's long-suffering supporters, players and staff would, collectively, like to tell the club's hierarchy exactly where they can shove their bland offer of 'thanks'. 'The process to appoint a successor will now begin,' they concluded. Which, one imagines, will be a right good laugh and, at the same time, a painful exercise in the blind leading the blind. This was the latest, devastating, blow to the club's loyal-to-the-borders-of-stupidity support as a manager whom they trusted to the point of hero-worship simply could not find enough common ground with Ashley to contemplate staying on Tyneside. Or, far more likely, Ashley had made Rafa, to paraphrase Don Corleone, 'an offer he couldn't accept.' This blogger will leave it up to you to form an opinion on that one, dear blog reader. Thus, a week before the new pre-season starts, the club has announced that Benitez's contract will not be renewed. Unbelievable, but sadly inevitable given the lack of positivity which has been coming out of Barrack Road all summer long. With the benefit of hindsight, this blogger thinks all fans should have probably worked out where this was heading as soon as the much heralded 'talks' between Rafa and Ashley, held soon after last season finished in the second week of May, didn't produce the announcement of the signing of a new contract within days. All talks of potential takeovers have gone suspiciously quiet - as they have done on least a dozen occasions before during the previous decade - and, with pre-season due to start next Monday, this leaves the club in limbo ahead of what will, surely, be another battle-to-avoid-relegation campaign. The club's biggest asset has gone leaving a squad which is already woefully weak with players already leaving and several more expected to follow or to be agitating for moves out of this toxic swamp in the coming weeks.
Benitez and Ashley always seemed the most unlikely of marriages since they came together in March 2016, following the sacking of Ashley's last, disastrous, appointment, Steve McClaren. The Spaniard has never been shy of engaging in political manoeuvring; he proved that with his sometimes fractious relationships with those above him at several clubs. At Valencia, he made his infamous 'I hoped for a sofa and they bought me a lamp' quote over the club's transfer policy whilst, at Liverpool, many inside Anfield reportedly felt no matter what level of control and finance he was handed, he would have wanted more. Ashley, meanwhile, is the billionaire who runs a club he bought - seemingly hoping for a quick resale and profit but without bothering to do any due diligence and thus didn't realise either the size of the debt the club's previous ownership had run up or the fact that a credit crunch was just around the corner and the days of rich men buying Premier League football clubs as their playthings was about to be a thing of the past - his own way. He is someone who cedes control to no-one, helped by a skin so thick that it is hard to think of any owner of any football club in the world so utterly unmoved by dissent, discontent or outright hatred from supporters. In fact, to be frank, the biggest surprise is that Ashley and Benitez have lasted so long together. The public relations battle, of course, is a no contest. Benitez is - and will continue to be - seen by the club's supporters and by the media as a manager of no little tactical brilliance who has had Newcastle punching well above their weight for the last two seasons, with Ashley viewed as the quasi comedy villain who has claimed another backstabbing victim to go in the cupboard alongside Kevin Keegan, Alan Shearer and Chris Hughton. A tenure of abysmal failure and unmitigated disaster has, it would seem, hit a new low. Even the most pessimistic and hardened United supporters couldn't have envisaged as shambolic a summer as this, but we really should have since we've had plenty of previous experience. Who can blame Rafa and his colleagues for walking away? He had comparatively little to work with in terms of transfer funds and playing squads and each successful survival was something of a minor miracle. During his time at Newcastle, Benitez managed to re-unite an, at times openly mutinous, fanbase behind his team - who, despite some limitations at least appears to have a pride in the shirt - and succeeded in legitimising the club in football circles, giving The Magpies a measure of direction, respectability and even a splash self-respect, something which Newcastle had precious little of during the tenures of most previous Ashley appointees. The multiple messages of support from current squad players on social media to and about Benitez reflects the depth of feeling for him and the disquiet - within the club as well as outside of it - over his loss. The deal offered to him was almost certainly deliberately designed to engineer his exit - with no room for negotiation - and his departure, once again, makes Newcastle appear to be both directionless and foolish. It has been reported that Benitez himself had no prior knowledge of Monday's announcement until an acquaintance contacted him to say that the news of his departure was being broadcast on Sky Sports News. Another example of atypically classy behaviour from those running the club. Ashley's business model is, it is alleged, that Newcastle is a club which must 'look after itself financially'; but Benitez was not happy with a summer transfer budget, reportedly of between fifty and sixty million smackers plus any money raised from sales, or at least how he would be able to spend it. Ashley reportedly wants a young squad - players with potential sell-on value - and it was very unlikely any long-term contracts would be sanctioned with players aged in their late twenties - a significant bone of contention for Benitez who wished to mix youth with experience in his squad. As the former Newcastle player Joey Barton commented when leaving the club in 2011, Ashley is a businessman - a very successful one, as it happens - and, like many businessmen 'he knows the cost of everything but the value of nothing.' The owner did loosen the purse strings enough to break the club's decade-old transfer record to sign Paraguayan playmaker Miguel Almiron from MLS side Atlanta United for twenty million knicker in January. But, even this rare show of financial boldness failed to persuade Benitez, who wanted to push the club into the top ten of the Premiership, that it would become the norm. He has always wanted a measure of control over the clubs he manages - with some justification, many would argue, given his track record of success, his stature and vast experience - but it would surely not have come as a huge surprise that Ashley was disinclined to give ground. The Spaniard is also likely to have had doubts about whether Newcastle would offer the sort of contracts to attract the calibre of player he wanted to move the team forward, while an upgrade on the club's training infrastructure, another long-running source of concern, had not been addressed. Throw a failure to agree on transfer finance, contracts, control and infrastructure into the melting pot and the relationship between an intransigent, immovable owner and a manager demanding what he was never likely to get was always going to unsustainable.
Ashley and Newcastle can insist they have been trying to get Benitez's signature for well over a year, but the offer of a one-year contract on his current reported six million quid-a-year terms failed to break the impasse. Newcastle may try to argue that they would be right to display a reluctance to hand out long-term deals to players working under a manager only committed for the next twelve months. Once again, one or two people might buy that argument. But not many. As the NUFC.com website noted, in disgust: 'The contempt shown for the fans by the owner is, again, bordering on the criminal. It wasn't our fault he inherited a club with massive debts and we had nothing to do with his recent Debenhams debacle. All self-inflicted but his anger is seemingly taken out on us. Any anti-Ashley chants were brought on by his own ineptitude and mismanagement but instead of making amends, in true barrow-boy fashion, he cuts his nose off to spite his face with petty acts of revenge.' What is beyond question in that Benitez has been a force for good at Newcastle. He restored them to the Premier League in 2017 after having been brought into the club too late to prevent relegation the previous season then followed that with respectable finishes of tenth in 2018 and thirteenth last term. He also, as he did at Liverpool, tapped into the sort of language that Newcastle fans understand, portraying himself as the man on their side, a boast which Ashley could never make. This meant, as Benitez walked around St James' Park surrounded by players and families after the last home game of what turned into his final campaign, there was a hope - albeit, as slim one - that Ashley might find the wriggle room to give Newcastle's supporters and the manager what they wanted. History should have told us all we were deluding ourselves. For Ashley, however, this is another highly damaging episode which can only reduce his standing with Newcastle's support even further; not that Ashley seems at all bothered about that. Indeed, many suspect he appears to enjoy courting bad-feeling and deliberately pissing people off; his decision to rename St James' Park after his odious sportwear company in 2011 aptly proved.
All of this nonsense has been conducted against a backdrop of the latest proposed - or, should that be 'alleged'? - takeover project involving United Arab Emirates billionaire Sheikh Khaled bin Zayed Al Nahyan's investment group. A rather facial situation which has, surely, only got as much publicity as it has as a means to get supporters to renew their - price-significantly-adjusted-for-inflation - season tickets (the closing date for which is next week, as a matter of pure disinterest). Ashley's past behaviour suggests he still will plough on with what he wants to do regardless of how many people he upsets or how many gather around Sir Bobby Robson's statue or demonstrate outside Sports Direct on Northumberland Street. The BBC claims that 'the proposed takeover will not, according to those involved, be affected by Benitez's departure - but that has all gone quiet in recent weeks.' Beware, dear blog reader, Arabs bearing gifts. Or, indeed, remember that old maxim 'be careful what you wish for, it might come true.' The number of Newcastle fans who have been heard excited exclaiming variants on 'great, a billionaire is coming to save us from the clown ruining out club' makes this blogger wonder whether this is 2019 or 2007 since he can recalled the same sort of things being said when Ashley was the saviour and the late Freddie Shepherd the despised tyrant needing to be shown the door. Plus ca change, plus ca la meme choice. The next item on the agenda is a new manager, with pre-season training looming and bookies - of course - wasting no time in making a Benitez-less Newcastle favourites for relegation, seemingly with much glee. The list of names being touted around will hardly have fans heading doon Th' Bigg Market in celebration. But, it doesn't really matter which desperate out-of-work plank Ashley picks for the gig, the fact that he will be The Not-Rafa will, surely, doom the tenure of whoever-it-is to dissatisfaction and rancour from Day One. It's Brian Clough coming after Don Revie. David Moyes after Sir Alex Ferguson. Or, to put it another way, it's Chris Evans replacing Jeremy Clarkson on Top Gear. It's Be Here Now following (What's The Story) Morning Glory? It's The Godfather III coming after The Godfather II! Whoever gets the job is, like all of the above, on an absolute hiding to nothing whether they're good, bad or indifferent. Sheikh Yer Man City's assistant manager Mikel Arteta is reported to be an early favourite with the bookmakers but why on Earth would he leave the Premier League champions for the abject chaos of Tyneside? The money can't be that good? Jose Mourinho has been mentioned but this is surely a fantasy unless a takeover does go ahead and the former Moscow Chelski and The Scum boss is given guarantees of untold millions to spend and the complete control he has always enjoyed at his previous clubs. And, while Ashley would probably love to appoint someone like Eddie Howe or Sean Dyche, why would either of those highly regarded young managers risk their reputation in a toxic environment when they had such control and popularity at Bournemouth and Burnley respectively? Whoever accepts this role - and, remember, Ashley's previous appointments have included rotten non-entities such as McClaren, Alan Pardew, John Carver and Joe Kinnear. Twice - will have a hard (for which read impossible) act to follow in the hearts of most - if not all - Newcastle's fans. Ashley has failed to keep arguably the best manager he will ever have - one who could have taken the heat away from his office because he is so beloved by supporters and one who actually gave Newcastle some gravitas with his record of managing clubs such as Valencia, Liverpool, Inter Milan, Moscow Chelski FC, Napoli and Real Madrid. This may not matter to Ashley - indeed, it seems not to - as his sole aim appears to be keeping the club in the Premier League (something his previous appointees have, twice, failed to do during his decade at St James') until such a time as can find some joker to pay him three hundred and fifty million knicker to take it off his hands. If he ever does.
And what of Benitez? He, reportedly, has a twelve million knicker-a-year (and as much chow mien as you can eat) offer from the Chinese Super League Club Dalian Yifang on the table. But, this is a manager who has insisted his vision is to make progress at clubs of stature, putting them in the place where they deserve to be. The big jobs in Europe which Benitez will believe fit his profile are not currently available - except for Moscow Chelski and it's doubtful he'd wish to return there - but is China really where the fifty nine-year-old, whose family still live on Merseyside, wants to take himself at this point in his career? As usual, however, the biggest losers in all of this fiasco are Newcastle's fans as they digest the latest sorry episode in the scarcely credible soap opera that is their club.
