After a week away to recover from a hernia operation, Rafa Benitez is back at the Benton training base and is set to arrange ‘one-to-one meetings’ with Dwight Gayle and Jack Colback to discuss their futures at the club – according to the Daily Star.
Benitez returned to Tyneside on Monday and resumed training duties today, having not seen most his players for a fortnight due to the international break and his recovery from a recent operation.
Rafa will be eager to get back to work and the Daily Star claim he has arranged a series of ‘one-to-one meetings’ with several first team members, including Dwight Gayle and Jack Colback.
Gayle was the subject of a £15m bid from Fulham on Deadline Day – with suggestions on Tyneside that the club would sell at the right price – whilst Jack Colback also failed to secure a move away – despite talks with Wolves – after being told to train with the Under-23s following an alleged fall out with the Spaniard.
Gayle – last season’s top scorer – appears to have lost his place in the first team and the events of deadline day suggest his long-term future could lay elsewhere, whilst Colback has been nowhere to be seen so far this season.
Talks between Benitez and the pair seem appropriate, with their futures needing to be adressed so they can approach the upcoming season in the right frame of mind after a slightly uncertain few weeks at the club.
Gayle and Colback are the only names mentioned in the report, but it would not surprise us if other outcasts such as Darlow, Saivet and Haidar were summoned by Benitez to discuss their situations at the club after failing to secure a move away this summer.
