By the time Newcastle United’s team coach crawls down Carrow Road and swings right on to Geoffrey Watling Way on Saturday evening, Rafael Benítez’s players will have negotiated a far more significant junction.
As the bus gathers speed on its journey up the A1402 towards the airport, Newcastle may have turned a significant corner and find themselves pointing in a promising new direction. Alternatively, the club could be contemplating Championship football, with Benítez tacitly acknowledging that the challenge of keeping them out of it is a more poisoned chalice than even he had envisaged. Well before they land at Samson Aviation, a private terminal tucked discreetly away from the public’s prying eyes in a quiet corner of Newcastle airport, the future will have begun to be mapped out.
Should Benítez’s new side lose to 17th-placed Norwich they will be red-hot favourites to finish second bottom ahead of Aston Villa and it would take a particularly brave player to venture out from the sanctuary of their gated mansions in nearby Woolsington, Ponteland and Darras Hall this weekend. Win, though, and they will be level on points with Alex Neil’s side with a game in hand and the prospect of next season’s exciting “Rafa-lution” to play for.
If things go wrong, the former Valencia, Liverpool, Internazionale, Chelsea, Napoli and Real Madrid manager is almost certain to walk away, leaving Tynesiders agonising about the prospect of what might have been.
As things stand, the possibilities are tantalising. Providing survival is secured, the Spaniard has carte blanche to rip up the club’s flawed management structure and recruitment strategy while enjoying the sort of autonomy the ultimately cowed Alan Pardew and Steve McClaren probably did not even dare dream about.
Benítez, however, is in effect managing with one arm tied behind his back. Newcastle’s board may have spent £82m on new players this season but their refusal to listen to McClaren’s pleas for a left-back, a centre-half, a decent back-up goalkeeper and a reliable goalscorer threatens to bite them on the backside.
It does not help that the squad consistently top the Premier League injury charts, with 11 senior professionals undergoing treatment this week. Their number includes Rob Elliot, a revelation in goal since replacing the seriously injured Tim Krul last autumn but now another casualty statistic after rupturing a cruciate ligament playing for the Republic of Ireland last week. His replacement, Karl Darlow, has made one, distinctly iffy, league appearance this season.
Not that Darlow’s latest manager sees things in quite such a bleak light. “When I received the news about Rob I was thinking: ‘Pfft, I cannot believe the injuries we have,’” said Benítez, who lost his first game 1-0 at Leicester City before securing a 1-1 home draw with Sunderland, on Friday. “It was very bad news for us.
“But afterwards I realised we still have a good keeper in Karl, we have to support him and prepare the team to do well. This morning when I was coming here I was thinking about that. We have eight games to play, so why say: ‘Oh, it’s impossible to stay up.’ It’s not impossible. At the moment we have the players doing what I’m asking. They’re following instructions and working really hard. We’re going in the right direction – we just have to convert these things into wins.”
By uncanny coincidence Friday was seven years to the day since Alan Shearer’s unveiling as Newcastle’s manager at a packed St James’ Park press conference, with the club’s former captain and England striker given eight games in which to stave off relegation.
One win, two draws and five defeats later Newcastle were consigned to the drop at Aston Villa, where home fans taunted them with banners inquiring: “Who’s your next Messiah: Ant or Dec?”
At least Shearer’s latest successor possesses a slightly different coaching pedigree. “It’s different to when Alan was here,” Benítez said, somewhat diplomatically. “The only shame is that we can’t bring Shearer back again as a striker; he could score some goals and that would be helpful.”
While their penchant for conceding goals represents a considerable problem for a Newcastle defence in which France’s Moussa Sissoko is likely to be played out of position at left-back on Saturday, scoring them is far from this team’s forte either.
Concerned about this drought, Benítez swiftly hired Allan Russell, a Glaswegian former striker turned specialist attacking coach, to offer his shot-shy centre-forward Aleksandar Mitrovic one-to-one tuition. When Mitrovic headed home Gini Wijnaldum’s cross to earn Newcastle a point against Sunderland, this move appeared inspired but Benítez seems likely to resist resorting to the sort of fundamentalist cross-propelled tactics best suited to the Serbia striker’s game.
Instead, he hinted that a newly fit Papiss Cissé could possibly replace him. “You can go wide and high and have good crosses but in England the strongest part of the majority of teams is the centre-backs in the air, so I don’t think we just need to concentrate on crosses we know are important for Mitrovic,” Benítez said. “We have Cissé; maybe the attack can be in a different way. I can see Cissé giving us a hand. He’ll be a big boost for us.”
The 55-year-old likes his teams to pass intelligently but this Newcastle squad have generally enjoyed most success adopting the low possession, counterattacking tactics with which Pardew propelled them to a fifth-place finish. Arguably, part of McClaren’s failure was down to a bold attempt to alter the team’s philosophy, with his introduction of the subsequently abandoned so-called “six pass rule” proving especially disastrous.
The idea was that the team made six, normally sideways, passes to ensure they “controlled the phase of play” before advancing, with this policy not only failing to enable them to “pass through” opponents but proving even more self-destructive than the similarly patient approach Louis van Gaal forlornly endeavoured to introduce at Manchester United.
Gameplans aside, McClaren – who would have given a lot to swap his head coach title for the power-suffused manager label Benítez demanded – was hindered by the board’s insistence on signing players aged under 26, leaving him low on leadership.
Although that rule is now scrapped, his successor has necessarily inherited the same deficiency. Perhaps tellingly, an upbeat media briefing punctuated with repeated use of “confidence” and “self-belief” – McClaren, who liked his buzzwords, would have approved – featured Benítez seeking to play down the leadership issue, which he has addressed in individual meetings with players. “They realise it’s time to do things better,” he said. “They know they’re responsible for this situation. I don’t think anyone wants to go down; it’ll be bad for everyone if we do.”
Jamaal Lascelles is certainly buying into the new mantra. “The gaffer’s starting to get a reaction from us,” said the centre-half. “He’s doing a lot of brilliant tactical stuff and our ball play’s been a lot better. Everyone’s much more passionate. There’s a desire to win and do well.”
With Newcastle in danger of missing out on next season’s £100m-plus Premier League broadcasting bonanza and losing Benítez, Mike Ashley can only hope the biggest, and most welcome, volte-face of his Newcastle ownership has not been made too late.
“The stature of this club’s massive,” Benítez said, a little wistfully. “If we can stay up we can build something here. We can do well.” If, if, if …
