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Rafa Benítez (now unemployed)


Greg

Would you have Rafa back?   

463 members have voted

  1. 1. Would you have Rafa back?

    • Yes, as manager, immediately
    • Yes, as manager, but at some point in the future (eg if relegated)
    • Yes, in an advisory or DoF role
    • No, not in any meaningful capacity

This poll is closed to new votes


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It was bad like. I can barely remember us stringing more than 2- 3 passes together at a time.

 

Gayle and Perez are just not Premier League quality. I'd rather see Murphy given a shot up top if we are playing Ritchie on the right.

Barely anyone in our team is Premier league quality. It would probably go a long way to explaining why we can't string two passes together if you look at it objectively.

Don’t buy this and frankly sick of hearing people trot out their trite, half thought through, assertions. Make a f***ing list of the first team players who ‘graced’ the PL this weekend. Is our squad  really qualitatively different? Fundamentally less  than? Cast your mind back to Wednesday, to Swansea, to Stoke. To the eight games we have lost by a single goal. To the seven we’ve drawn and had chances to win. It is f***ing tough to take like, but newsflash, you’re deluded if you think any positive is Rafa’s genius and any negative is down to our players. They did a f***ing sterling job today. If you stick all the time you rarely win the low probability games. If you twist too much you lose more than you should., but win some you shouldn’t. We’ve got three points from half a dozen winnable home games. If I was the manager, I’d be looking in the mirror, not belittling the players. Rafa will be doing similar. Hope it doesn’t matter come season end.

 

 

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Guest firetotheworks

As bad as getting dicked 0-6 at home to Liverpool, or 0-3 at home to a Di Canio Sunderland though apparently. [emoji38]

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Kenedy scores that great chance to make it 2-0 and all of a sudden it's 'whey, Rafa can set a team up away from home like...wor away forms keeping us up here man!'.

 

Both our goals vs Burnley/Palace have come from set pieces, whilst both conceded have been from set pieces. That tells you all you need to know about the quality of player and the quality of the manager.

 

The four points dropped in the last two matches could well end up costing us survival, but they will not be the fault of Rafa. We tried to dominate the ball early on and push our Full Backs high and we could have conceded two or three goals in that time- if we open up and try to play we will get murdered. Anyone expecting anything other than absolute pragmatism is either clueless or completely unrealistic/both.

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It was bad like. I can barely remember us stringing more than 2- 3 passes together at a time.

 

Gayle and Perez are just not Premier League quality. I'd rather see Murphy given a shot up top if we are playing Ritchie on the right.

Barely anyone in our team is Premier league quality. It would probably go a long way to explaining why we can't string two passes together if you look at it objectively.

Don’t buy this and frankly sick of hearing people trot out their trite, half thought through, assertions. Make a f***ing list of the first team players who ‘graced’ the PL this weekend. Is our squad  really qualitatively different? Fundamentally less  than? Cast your mind back to Wednesday, to Swansea, to Stoke. To the eight games we have lost by a single goal. To the seven we’ve drawn and had chances to win. It is f***ing tough to take like, but newsflash, you’re deluded if you think any positive is Rafa’s genius and any negative is down to our players. They did a f***ing sterling job today. If you stick all the time you rarely win the low probability games. If you twist too much you lose more than you should., but win some you shouldn’t. We’ve got three points from half a dozen winnable home games. If I was the manager, I’d be looking in the mirror, not belittling the players. Rafa will be doing similar. Hope it doesn’t matter come season end.

 

 

O0

 

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Don't we have significantly more Premiership experienced players than say Brighton and Huddersfield. Most of our team have played in the Premiership a fair amount, Shelvey, Diame, Clark, Dummett even. It's just we lack real stand out quality something Rafa was trying to address but Ashley wouldn't let him.

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Kenedy scores that great chance to make it 2-0 and all of a sudden it's 'whey, Rafa can set a team up away from home like...wor away forms keeping us up here man!'.

 

Both our goals vs Burnley/Palace have come from set pieces, whilst both conceded have been from set pieces. That tells you all you need to know about the quality of player and the quality of the manager.

 

The four points dropped in the last two matches could well end up costing us survival, but they will not be the fault of Rafa. We tried to dominate the ball early on and push our Full Backs high and we could have conceded two or three goals in that time- if we open up and try to play we will get murdered. Anyone expecting anything other than absolute pragmatism is either clueless or completely unrealistic/both.

 

This is the crux of it for me. We’re good enough to take the lead quite often but we’re not prolific enough to get the killer second at all. We’ve thrown points away hand over fist this season because we can’t get that second because the finishing is so poor and/or the mentality of the team after taking the lead is to sit back, concede time and space and we invariably end up conceding. Getting Slimani in was huge. Don’t think it’s too much to say that the club’s survival this season rests on his shoulders. Can’t see anyone else in this squad capable of tucking away enough chances to turn all of these draws into wins.

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How much did the Palace squad today cost compared to ours? Gayle was our biggest signing om the pitch, and he cost just over a third of Benteke.

Rafa is working miracles with this squad man.

 

He is, and something the pundits seem to be completely overlooking.

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It was bad like. I can barely remember us stringing more than 2- 3 passes together at a time.

 

Gayle and Perez are just not Premier League quality. I'd rather see Murphy given a shot up top if we are playing Ritchie on the right.

Barely anyone in our team is Premier league quality. It would probably go a long way to explaining why we can't string two passes together if you look at it objectively.

Don’t buy this and frankly sick of hearing people trot out their trite, half thought through, assertions. Make a f***ing list of the first team players who ‘graced’ the PL this weekend. Is our squad  really qualitatively different? Fundamentally less  than? Cast your mind back to Wednesday, to Swansea, to Stoke. To the eight games we have lost by a single goal. To the seven we’ve drawn and had chances to win. It is f***ing tough to take like, but newsflash, you’re deluded if you think any positive is Rafa’s genius and any negative is down to our players. They did a f***ing sterling job today. If you stick all the time you rarely win the low probability games. If you twist too much you lose more than you should., but win some you shouldn’t. We’ve got three points from half a dozen winnable home games. If I was the manager, I’d be looking in the mirror, not belittling the players. Rafa will be doing similar. Hope it doesn’t matter come season end.

 

 

 

If I'm deluded, I have been since the start of the season when I thought we needed to get some real quality up front to avoid the relegation battle. I haven't seen much to change my mind. It's all very well to say we should attack more, but at the end of the day you still need someone to put the chances away. You could say the same for Palace really, they had more than enough possession yesterday, but their striker Benteke was absolutely hopeless at putting the chances away. If they hadn't been given a pen I can guarantee he would have missed that chance as well.

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One thing that just seems to have been ingrained in Newcastle United for years now, and I don't quite understand how or why, is that we appear to be a 45 minute team at best. Yesterday was a classic example, solid 45 minutes initially and then after the half time whistle blows and they come out the flow of the game just changes so dramatically, sometimes it's us getting dicked on first half and then playing out of our skin for the next 45 minutes (often futile, mind). This was a huge thing pre-Rafa and has definitely continued under his tenure.

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I love the assumption that we're just going to be better than another team for most of the game. Particularly when the squad is like this. We were playing a better team than us with superior players and away from home. The fact we're giving ourselves even a chance of winning games like this is testimony to Benitez.

 

A team with Benteke, Townsend, Zaha and Cabaye should be ripping us apart.

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I'm not really buying that tbh, ON.  Up until we scored it was back and forth and then we just seemed to collapse back into our own half.

 

Nothing to do with £80-90m worth of players coming out and having a go at our £10m defence then.

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They weren't having a go before that?

 

We're not good enough to play like that for 90 minutes. With more quality on the pitch we'd have been 2-3 up in these last two games and we'd be able to manage games better. Not sure why it's a surprise that better teams with better players are going to have large spells where they're attacking us.

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We would have been cast a drift at the bottom by now if it wasn't for Rafa. Come the end of the season, our goal difference might be the deciding factor and that too will be down to Rafa's ability to polish a turd.

 

That doesn't mean to say I agree with everything he does but him and Lascelles are literally the only two people at the club keeping me going right now.

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