Rafa Benítez (now unemployed)

[Sean]

Anyone losing faith in Rafa...who would do better?

 

The only problem is our fucking owner.

 

And has been for 10 years now.

 

But shortsighted muppets will be muppets...

[NEEJ]

Are people actually trying to say Rafa should get the boot? If so, fuck right off, man. Utter fucking mongs. Deserve all they get the fucking cretins. What an embarrassment.

[Sean]

Dare I say should have kept the negativity to a minimum if he was going to see out his last year and tried to maybe reconsider some of his decisions in the transfer window?

 

What decisions did Benitez make in the transfer window exactly that he should be reconsidering. Do enlighten me.

 

Murphy has been a terrible signing so far. Muto has not had the impact you want from him given the fact he cost more than our average net spend.

 

Letting Mitro go instead of trying to gel a system around him (I was not a fan of Mitro at all but its clear that he has some impact at this level).

 

Look man, Rafa as impeccable as he has been in coaching poor quality players so far, overall I don't find that he has been remarkably astute in the transfer market for us.

 

This is working on the (wrong) assumption that Rafa knows what we spend on players, and has control. 5m for Muto? Do it. 12m? Too much.

 

Our manager literally has no fucking idea whats going on. Probably puts 100 names forward each summer and has to see what shit lands.

 

Start thinking ffs.

 

 

 

[Sean]

Dare I say should have kept the negativity to a minimum if he was going to see out his last year and tried to maybe reconsider some of his decisions in the transfer window?

 

What decisions did Benitez make in the transfer window exactly that he should be reconsidering. Do enlighten me.

Jacob Murphy, total shite, and not given the chance to prove otherwise anyway, that's his most expensive signing and hes made zero impact in a season and a bit.

 

Spending 10 million Muto and hes barely played a games worth of minutes, has also contributed nothing.

 

Manquillo, I'm no scout but surely there was a younger, more hungry player someone across Europe to spend 5 million pounds on?

 

If reports are to be believed he wanted to spend a combined 40 million on Rondon and Kenedy too, what a fuck up that would have been.

 

Atsu, 6 million quids worth of shite, that's without mentioning the likes of Gamez and Lazaar who were seemingly brought in for the crack and cast off without being given a chance.

 

That's the chance you take with transfers, but overall we've had more misses than hits from him.

 

10 million buys you fuck all nowadays in case you'd been alseep for the bast part of a decade.

[Sean]

When people moan about Rafa's transfers it's like complaining you've not been served a Michelin star meal when you've sent the missus out with 50p and in the shop there's only damaged tins of dog food left on the shelf.

 

This. Ashley plays on the fucking stupidity of our fans, and of course they never fail to deliver. It still shocks me how fucking shortsighted a huge proportion of our fanbase is.

 

Im still of the belief that IQ level is directly linked to people who are fully aware of the circumstances for us being shit turning on Rafa. Would love to see a test on this tbh 

[Guest reefatoon]

“Ashley won’t stop them going ffs”. They will turn up in their droves to boo a Rafa sub.

[Guest chopey]

Why did Rafa stick around after the summer ? I can't believe he couldn't of negotiated himself out of the £6 million millstone, I know we had a terrible set of fixtures the first couple of month but he is just setting himself up to fail !!! At this stage the record books will show Rafa's time at NUFC consisted of two relegations, one promotion and limping out of the every cup we entered under him, Pardew hung his hat on a 5th place finish for years please don't let Rafa do the same with 10th.

[TRon]

Until he gets a striker fit for purpose who can start games, he is always going to have Mitrovic thrown back in his face. We are going into games even against mediocre teams shit scared of losing because they have much better forwards than us. Not that I rate Mitrovic that much but he's better than Joselu.

[Hanshithispantz]

10 million buys you even less when you don’t have a clear budget, which is the most important thing really. This sell to buy shite is completely ridiculous. It’s impossible to spend well when you have no idea how much you’re going to have to spend and when.

[Hanshithispantz]

Not to say he hasn’t made bad buys, he’s made some astonishingly shite buys throughout his career but he’ll usually end up with a good side. We basically need every buy he makes to hit the ground running.

[Zero]

I think the question should be why he decided to spend the money in this way. It is not a question that

1. He being fucked up by the fat cunt

2. He shouldn't be responsible for buying his 27th choice etc.

 

However assuming that what he spent was what he have and he has "the right to choose", then I think it is valid to question why pay 10m for bench warmers.

[tmonkey]

We won't pay the going rate for anyone with either clear potential or experience. Everyone we sign is bottom of the barrel stuff, the type of player for whom there's no real demand and therefore we can dictate the buying terms, and as such they're complete long shots in terms of turning out to be good signings and highly unlikely to be suitable for PL level in the short term. If Rafa has a choice between a long shot or nothing, he's obviously going to take the long shot since at least there's a chance of them turning out to be decent.

 

The issue is exaggerated the further up the pitch we go. Potentially decent goalkeepers and defenders are inherently cheaper than attacking/creative midfielders or goal-scoring strikers. Rafa basically has no chance of improving the team's attack beyond a complete shot in the dark - at that point it becomes a numbers game, he needs to sign a hell of a lot of dross and bargain basement players before he strikes lucky and gets someone who is actually good at this level when it comes to creating or scoring goals.

 

I'd say this reflects what we have on the pitch. Good keeper, some good defenders, a couple of decent midfielders, then the rest are shiite, especially the wingers/strikers. Blaming Rafa for what he's spent so far is just nonsense given these constraints. If Ashley wasn't a cunt withholding the clubs own cash we'd probably have brought in the likes of Townsend and Sturridge (or if not them then others of that ability level), and all of a sudden you're talking about a different team entirely one that is solid at the back and dangerous going forward.

[Stifler]

He was by no means the worst performer in the pitch yesterday (arise Atsu), however Ritchie is rather ineffective. All he seems to offer is that run on the wing where he cuts in instead of crossing to eventually take off a weak shot. He’s not good enough, yesterday he didn’t make one successful delivery, and his first corner was as bad as anything that Pardew’s players served up at set pieces.

The thing is though he had a relatively successful season in the Championship and to a large amount of our fan base that’s enough to be cult hero for years beyond what they should be. Like many in our team the Championship is his level, it’s why the reports in the summer of Ashley wanting to replace him kept cropping up.

Like I said yesterday I can see why there was other subsititutes that needed to be made, but fucking hell Ritchie was so poor and ineffective that we had Yedlin further forward than him for large parts of the game and Kenedy was coming in from the other side to get attacks going down his wing.

[triggs]

I don't know but presumably our scouting network has a budget of about a fiver, so I guess we don't get great pools of players to pick from. I will say though Carr got a load of stick for bad buys but you can see the conditions he worked under he actually did pretty welll

Carr did a great job really. We haven’t bought a good PL standard attacking player since he left

[tmonkey]

I don't know but presumably our scouting network has a budget of about a fiver, so I guess we don't get great pools of players to pick from. I will say though Carr got a load of stick for bad buys but you can see the conditions he worked under he actually did pretty welll

 

Said this all along. Carr did a good job for us given that we were limited to signing gambles from weaker leagues. A decent or good manager/scout probably has a hit rate of lets say 33%, i.e. 1 in 3 signings are good ones, rest are squad fillers or complete dross, and if the team is good enough then noone really cares about the 66% that come in, fail or don't get a look in, and are shipped out. When you add the constraints that Ashley added, e.g. players must be cheap, of the right age for resale, no other club capable of offering better terms is in for them, and then factor in the additional gambles all of these introduce (e.g. having to sign players from a weaker foreign league like France because that's where many of the players in that category are found now means you introduce additional gambles around language, adaptability, etc) that "good" hit rate needs to be brought right the way down in terms of a target success rate which the manager/scout is judged by.

[TRon]

One thing which rankles with me is Rafa's stubborn faith in Joselu. He stuck with him too long last season, then when he missed a crucial pen, the penny finally dropped and he barely got a start after that. So come a new season and Rafa seems to have forgotten everything and wiped the slate clean. Why? The guy has the shooting prowess of a six year old, you are basically relying on him getting a few headed goals from barely a handful of decent crosses per month.

[Dinho lad]

Would b so typical if some fans turned on Rafa and consequently the heat is reduced on Ashley.

 

[xLiaaamx]

Thing with Carr is, even when players didn't work out, you could often see why he thought they might turn out good.

 

Riviere had a lot of pace and was quite strong too. You could see why Carr thought he'd be worth a go as a backup. Marveaux clearly had good delivery and quick feet.

 

 

 

The thing that really didn't make sense, is we signed these technical foreign players, and kept an english dinosaur who wanted cloggers in charge.

[xLiaaamx]

One thing which rankles with me is Rafa's stubborn faith in Joselu. He stuck with him too long last season, then when he missed a crucial pen, the penny finally dropped and he barely got a start after that. So come a new season and Rafa seems to have forgotten everything and wiped the slate clean. Why? The guy has the shooting prowess of a six year old, you are basically relying on him getting a few headed goals from barely a handful of decent crosses per month.

 

It feels this way with the tactics. We're playing like we did at Huddersfield away last year when we were just scared of everyone. We've dropped 20 yards back on where we played in the second half of last season and I don't get why.

[UncleBingo]

https://twitter.com/read_avidly/status/1046371917811404801

[ScottishMagpie]

Was listening to one of the True Faith podcasts and one of the points made hit home with me.  We 'own' 1 striker that cost £5m!!! 

 

Anyone who thinks Rafa is anywhere near part of the problem needs taken out behind the barn and shot.

[TRon]

Was listening to one of the True Faith podcasts and one of the points made hit home with me.  We 'own' 1 striker that cost £5m!!! 

 

Anyone who thinks Rafa is anywhere near part of the problem needs taken out behind the barn and shot.

 

We did sell a striker for £27m and that was down to Rafa. He was more than happy to replace him with Rondon and for all we know, that might still work out, but I think he's big enough to take responsibility for that decision.

[tmonkey]

Was listening to one of the True Faith podcasts and one of the points made hit home with me.  We 'own' 1 striker that cost £5m!!! 

 

Anyone who thinks Rafa is anywhere near part of the problem needs taken out behind the barn and shot.

 

We did sell a striker for £27m and that was down to Rafa. He was more than happy to replace him with Rondon and for all we know, that might still work out, but I think he's big enough to take responsibility for that decision.

 

A striker who isn't suited to Rafa's system, to things like Shelvey's passing ability (need someone more mobile to take advantage of arguably one of the best through ball passers in the league), and by the striker's own admission isn't good at following Rafa's instructions. And also sold at a time when Rafa was expecting to be able to spend money on replacements.

[Kasper]

Was listening to one of the True Faith podcasts and one of the points made hit home with me.  We 'own' 1 striker that cost £5m!!! 

 

Anyone who thinks Rafa is anywhere near part of the problem needs taken out behind the barn and shot.

 

We did sell a striker for £27m and that was down to Rafa. He was more than happy to replace him with Rondon and for all we know, that might still work out, but I think he's big enough to take responsibility for that decision.

 

More than happy? I'm pretty sure Rafa would have been a lot happier breaking our transfer record to sign that Plea guy for example

[TRon]

Was listening to one of the True Faith podcasts and one of the points made hit home with me.  We 'own' 1 striker that cost £5m!!! 

 

Anyone who thinks Rafa is anywhere near part of the problem needs taken out behind the barn and shot.

 

We did sell a striker for £27m and that was down to Rafa. He was more than happy to replace him with Rondon and for all we know, that might still work out, but I think he's big enough to take responsibility for that decision.

 

More than happy? I'm pretty sure Rafa would have been a lot happier breaking our transfer record to sign that Plea guy for example

 

Plea didn't want to come here. Whether our bid was serious is another matter, but if Germany was his preferred choice, it's immaterial. Rondon appears to have been second choice and he's here.