If Bruce hadn't done aswel a rafs Benitez for two seasons and got relegated like him nufc would probably still be owned by Ashley. In the words of rio fedinand you should be saying thankyou.
Your missing a small point here. That point being it was Rafa who invited Amanda to look at the club with a view to purchase it in the first place.
The point remains regardless... whether we like Bruce or not he kept the club in the division long enough. The only question is whether the deal would've remained if the club was relegated, but Bruce did his job first two full seasons in keeping the club up. Everyone knew the aim was 17th under both managers. Rafa just knew when to quit
Exactly.. he should've quit after finishing 12th and spent the rest of his career telling nufc to eat humble pie. He could've signed up for soccer Saturday looking smug and lay into us while others joined in until death He missed the opportunity because he's too thick ... we got away with it thankfully.
Oh well, at least he can look down on us, remember we went for "the guy who got Bournemouth relegated" after him.
Rafa quit when it became obvious to him that he wouldn't get the funding to take the club to the next level. Bruce got the job of his dreams that was way out of his league and he would never have quit. Although survival and nothing more was always Ashley's business plan, Bruce would have been happy scraping by like that, whereas Rafa wasn't having any of it.
I agree with this to a certain extent. I won't take anything away from what Rafa did for us at the time under the conditions he was working under. That being said, he is a pain in the ****ing arse wherever he goes, he is too divisive. He plays up to the fans to get them onside in his political games of brinkmanship with the ownerships he works under wherever he goes. He is ****ing stinkingly bad in the transfer market regardless of budgets and make no mistake, we would currently be playing with the most expensively assembled, boring pile of **** in history if he had taken over from Bruce. Give me Mehrdad, Amanda, Ashworth, Eales and Eddie every single day ahead of Rafa wanting to do it all on his own.
So Forrest’s answer to losing 5 in a row is to offer Cooper a new contract. Good for them it’s actually quite refreshing I suppose.
Yeah, makes a nice change from the usual knee-jerk sackings. If you're going to sanction signing over 20 players in one transfer window, you have to accept it will take time for players to bond and for systems & tactics to come together. It was a huge gamble. To then boot the manager after just a handful of games would be crazy.
It shows that they are prepared to stick with him. And it might help stability there. I think they have made the right choice.
At the time we got Rafa, it was a huge coup, way before he dragged his reputation through the dirt with the Everton debacle, and way beyond our expectations after McClaren. Transfer wise he did well with us I thought - immediately clearly out the players who didn't want to be there when we were relegated, and building a completely new team to achieve promotion. Also some of the transfers when back in the Premier league were a breath of fresh air, particularly Schar, Lejeurne and Feds, as for the first time in living memory he had given us a tough defence. Joselu was obviously dross, but as Rafa himself said, when you only £5m to spend on a striker, you know what you're going to get.
I think rafas signings where average at best. If you look at the list of signings he made there was some proper horrers.
Look at this list. https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/spo...-benitez-newcastle-signing-rated-16176124.amp
Your quite clearly forgetting the likes of Mat Selz, Jesus Gamez, Grant Hanley, Achraf Lazaar, Jacob ****ing Murphy, Christian Atsu, Muto, and Ki.
Because when we were so utter ****, and we were so ****ing desperate to clutch to any bloody straw, we deluded ourselves into thinking he was a world class rwb in the making and offered him a new contract
