http://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2016/07/31/viva-la-rafalucion-how-rafa-benitez-changed-it-all-around-at-new/?
Viva La Rafalucion! How Rafa Benitez changed it all around at Newcastle
Luke Edwards
31 JULY 2016 • 10:00AM
Persuading Mike Ashley Newcastle United is a football club not a business
Newcastle had been masquerading as a football club for far too long. The famous black and white stripes, the players, the supporters, had become subjects of Mike Ashley’s Sports Direct Empire.
Having stubbornly refused to release the club from his clamp of self-interest, ignoring the intermittent protests against him, Ashley changed as soon as Rafa Benitez arrive. If the Spaniard has cast a spell on the city, he has also hypnotised an owner who had spent years damaging the club, hurting and alienating supporters with every mistake, insult and false promise.
The club had lost its soul. It was about balance sheets, profit margins, a stepping stone stop for players looking to join a big club and free advertising for a sport shop selling cheap goods with all the panache of a church hall jumble sale.
No matter how many times Ashley was told his lack of ambition was strangling the hopes and dreams of the supporters, no matter how many times people complained that the club had become infatuated by profit margins at the expense of a successful football team, he refused to change course.
Benitez, though, has done something very few have managed - in business or in football - he persuaded Ashley things needed to be different.
Ashley has given Benitez more power than any of the eight managers he has worked with before at St James’ Park. He believes he has found someone special and the order from him has been ‘whatever Rafa wants, Rafa gets.’
He may still, strictly speaking, be an employee, but It is Benitez who runs Newcastle United now. Not Ashley, not managing director Lee Charnley, or the players who have so often worked to their own agenda, rather than the team. It is a club run by a football man not an accountant; an independent, talented and ambitious manager, rather than a bean counter completely reliant on Ashley’s patronage.
Altering perceptions, restoring hope
Even after relegation, Benitez has given supporters something they have lacked for more than a decade – hope. There is a belief, an expectancy, that better days lie ahead and it is all because there is so much love and admiration for him.
For the first time in years, Newcastle have a top class manager, not someone grateful to have the job like Joe Kinnear, Chris Hughton, Alan Pardew, John Carver or Steve McClaren. There a sense of anticipation this summer that has been lacking in so many previous pre-seasons.
Nobody expected the former manager of Real Madrid, Chelsea, Liverpool and Inter Milan to hang around after the club crashed into the Championship, but the Spaniard found it impossible to walk away because the passion of the supporters tugged on his heartstrings. He recognised this job is about more than just a football team. It’s about an entire city and its people.
It has unleashed something on Tyneside, a tribalism, an excitement, a confidence not seen since Kevin Keegan and Sir Bobby Robson sat in the dugout. It is has stirred up emotions and made supporters proud to support their club again - even one in the Championship.
Few top flight clubs can boast 33,000 season ticket holders, but it is unheard of in the Championship. Newcastle sold more season tickets this summer than they did 12 months ago. There is a unity in purpose and goals, in the boardroom and in the stands. It arguably makes Newcastle more powerful than they have been at any time during the Ashley years.
Ripping up the recruitment model
Even when money was belatedly invested in the team last season – a net spend of more than £80m – it could not repair the damage inflicted by years of neglect. Newcastle continued to sign individuals, aged 25 or under, focusing far too much attention on foreign imports and their potential resale value, rather than building a balance team with strength in depth in every area.
The money was spent badly by a transfer committee rather than a manager, and it re-enforced the view that those who were in charge were either unqualified to do the job or incapable because of the constraints imposed by the owner.
Benitez, though, has been given “full responsibility for the football operation” at Newcastle. He does not just identify the players he wants to sign, he also decides who can leave. As a result, more British players have arrived this summer than in any previous window under Ashley. Scotland internationals Matt Ritchie and Grant Hanley (at a combined cost of almost £20m), as well as former Arsenal midfielder Isaac Hayden and Crystal Palace striker Dwight Gayle.
But when the manager wanted experience, he also brought in the 31-year-old former Atletico Madrid full-back Jesus Gamez, the first player over the age of 28 signed by the Magpies since 2009.
With chief scout Graham Carr sidelined, Benitez’s control is not limited to transfer policy and scouting. He has also taken a keen interest in the Academy, altering the way young players are developed. He has held coaching seminars for all the coaching staff, he has also introduced a cup competition for local school children. At every turn, he has encouraged the club to engage with fans and to become a focal point in the city through its charitable arm, the Newcastle Foundation. There has been more positive PR for the club this summer than in the seven previous years combined.
From top to bottom, Benitez’s influence has been felt and even though the cost was a concern, the club has also finally begun its persistently postponed training ground redevelopment because Benitez wanted it.
Gambling on instant promotion
Newcastle are so confident they have got the right manager, they have decided to take a high stakes gamble on Benitez ensuring they make an instant return to the Premier League. Rather than cut costs, as most teams do after relegation, Newcastle made enough money last season to cushion the financial fallout from relegation.
As a result, they are working under the proviso they are a Premier League club in all but name and continue to operate with a Premier League budget, even though they missed out on the riches of the new television deal.
There have not been massive job cuts behind the scenes, players have not been sold to get them off the wage bill and they have, so far, spent more this summer on new, players than some top flight clubs. And at least four more signings are planned before the close of the transfer window.
Should Newcastle fail to win promotion next May, they could be in terrible financial trouble, but Benitez only took the job because they were willing to let him roll the dice for them. It all helps to give the impression that Newcastle are striving to be far more than they have been before under Ashley.
Even in the Football League, this feels like the start of something rather than just trying to repair the damage of old. If Keegan could get Newcastle promoted from the old Second Division and almost win the title, then Newcastle supporters, almost two decades later, are daring themselves to dream that Benitez can do the same.
