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Rafa Benitez on signing players “When I decided to stay I was expecting another thing…”

7 years ago
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Three weeks ago Rafa Benitez broke his silence on the lack of enough quality signings yet to arrive this summer.

The United boss saying that after meeting Mike Ashley in May, he had been confident that ‘we have the money available and the wages’ and that he was now (on 17 July) still confident that these signings would be arriving IF ‘Mike Ashley can keep his word.

With only a week to go until the season kicks off, Rafa Benitez was happy to give an update after Newcastle had strolled to a 2-0 win, against a poor Hellas Verona side who didn’t manage to threaten the United goal all game.

The Newcastle manager laying it on the line when asked about transfers, saying ‘When I decided to stay I was expecting another thing…Now we are where we are’.

With a net spend of only around £17m and having so far had to shop at the low end of the market for relative budget squad signings, rather than certain first team players, Rafa is clearly far from happy.

He talks of ‘Now I will try to do my best’ with what he has got but says he and the club are still ‘looking at different options’ and that ‘We know what we need’.

Obviously it would massively help if Rafa could get rid of unwanted players but even if that doesn’t happen, Mike Ashley has to surely back the manager with at least two or three of the signings he still feels he desperately needs. With a striker and goalkeeper clearly amongst those he desires.

We all wonder and worry what could happen if that backing from the owner doesn’t happen, especially when Rafa Benitez made clear his anger after a failure to back him in January, when not a single one of his transfer targets was signed, even on loan.

Along with Rafa Benitez, we will all be watching and hoping to see what happens in the transfer market in the remaining three weeks of this window.

Rafa Benitez – 6 August 2017:

“When I decided to stay I was expecting another thing… Now we are where we are.

“I decided to stay because of a lot of positive things I could see, starting with the fans.

“Now I will try to do my best to be sure that the team we have will be good enough to compete and stay as high as we can in the Premier League.

“We are trying to move players out to bring players in – we know what we need.

“We are looking at different options and if we can’t get one, we have to look at others.

“We know what we need and will try to do this until the end of the transfer window….

“We are trying to go in different directions at the same time.”

Rafa Benitez – 17 July 2017:

Rafa Benitez:

“We are working very hard and trying to get as close as possible to some signings.

“When I had the meeting with Mike Ashley (in May) I was confident that after that meeting we have the money available and the wages.

“Everything is in place to move forward.

Hopefully, Mike Ashley can keep his word and we can do what we want to do.”

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