This article is part of Football FanCast’s Pundit View series, which provides opinion and analysis on recent quotes from journalists, pundits, players and managers…
Rafa Benitez’s latest comments in FourFourTwo, via The Shields Gazette, suggest he would have stayed at Newcastle had he and Mike Ashley shared the same ambition for the club moving forward.
What did he say?
The Spaniard never really saw eye-to-eye with his owner throughout his spell in the north-east, and much of that was due to the lack of transfer funds made available to the manager.
He often had to rely on loan signings and bargain buys during his tenure, managing a tenth-placed finish in 2017/18 despite his most expensive signing – Miguel Almiron – coming towards the end of his reign.
Ashley has since criticised Benitez for leaving the club in the summer in order to chase money, having signed a lucrative deal to become manager of Chinese club Dalian Yifang.
Speaking out against the Magpies chairman, Benitez told FourFourTwo, as reported by The Shields Gazette: “My idea was to grow, to compete and to be sure we could challenge. But there was another vision, and that was it.
“If you see the profit of the team in the last few years, we did what we needed to do to be successful. And that, it’s up to him.”
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Different vision
Ashley’s antics over the summer seem rather perplexing and were made even more puzzling when he decided to trust Steve Bruce with big-money signings.
Benitez was rarely granted the responsibility to spend £40m in a single transfer window, yet that figure was spent on Joelinton alone, with Allan Saint-Maximin also costing £16.5m.
It shows the strain in the relationship between the two, and really an opportunity missed, as the Spaniard has shown that he often brings success to the clubs he manages, and the Magpies were clearly moving in the right direction under him.
If the appointment of Bruce proves to be an unsuccessful one, then fans have a right to bemoan Ashley and the poor decision to get rid of a proven manager who had the ambition and passion to take the club to the next level.
Benitez should have been trusted to recruit in the fashion he wanted. He already had his side overachieving and threatening to break into the top half, and with a bit of resources it may have been possible for the club to begin targeting the European place.