Rafa Benitez says he is sick of ‘wasting energy’ talking about the transfer window, a potential takeover and his contract situation at the club – calling for everyone to focus on the team and stay ‘united’.
Benitez has shut down several journalists in recent weeks when asked for some sort of transfer update, so todays frustrated and firy response was on the cards.
10 days into the window and we’re yet to see a new signing arrive, with a takeover no closer to being completed either – so it seems Rafa is ready to put all the speculation aside and focus on events on the pitch.
Here’s what he’s had to say during his pre-Chelsea press conference today:
“I will not talk about the transfer window, I will not talk about names & I will not talk about the takeover. We are wasting energy on these things.”
“We need to focus on the game. I could say it’s a difficult window like other managers , but I prefer not to”
“I don’t want to talk about players, I don’t want to talk about takeovers, & I don’t want to talk about me. I just want to talk about these players & our games”
These sound like the words of an incredibly frustrated man, but he makes a fair point. Takeover talk, transfer frustration and gossip about a contract he clearly won’t sign until the first two things are sorted out really do nothing to help us right
Rafa then said the following when asked if he was downbeat about the club’s current situation, with him urging fans to ‘stick together’ to help see us through over the coming months:
“I am not (downbeat) at the moment.
“It’s a big city & a big club. But when we stick together & are united we are better. The reality is that we have to stick together until the end. We have to carry on fighting, we will have problems, but we will do it”
“We have what we have, & we are where we are. We cannot analyse individual substitutions, decisions & everything all the time. If we do not have enough, we’ll try to do something more. No it’s not an ideal situation but the majority of fans understand the situation”
It’s hard to feel confident about tomorrow’s game against Chelsea, but that now has to be our main focus given there’s so much talk and so little movement on the takeover and transfer talk.
Let’s stick together and get behind Benitez and the boys. After all, it’s all we can do right now as we wait for the club to sort their act out.
Get behind the boys we’ve been doing that all season but never get anywhere and won’t with far man controlling the cash all we are is a championship team until we get some cash to spend championship here we come get used to it
Whomper(Quote)
Rafa needs to shut down all journalists. They fill the media with fake news every day. It’s not surprising the morale is so low amongst both fans and players alike. They print click baiting material all day long and when it does not suit them they delete the posts.
Dutch(Quote)
Rallying Cry from Rafa to stop wasting energy and stress on all this stuff we have no control over………………And get behind the team, our team…
BillyTheFish(Quote)
Wish those stupid journalists would ****** off and stop winding him up, they already know the answers to their bleeding obvious questions, they make a bad situation worse.
This is not to detract from the sole ******** who is responsible for all this.
GET OFF RAFAs BACK
Geordie exile(Quote)
It’s a sad state of affairs at NUFC. Rafa is a proud man and stuck in a contract he can’t walk away from. He shows he cares and the stupidity of how the club is run must disgust him as it does us fans. There is so much wrong I don’t know where to start. The usual January stupidness of trying to get a striker on loan who hasn’t played and will only be loaned to us if he isn’t any use to his own club (because he hasn’t recovered properly from him last injury). Ashley happy to see NUFC run like his sports direct stores – full of product lines that are cheap copied of the real thing – and happy to gamble rather than invest to stay up. Rafa is by far the best manager we have had since SBR and keegan and this ownership sees this as the chance to run like a league 2 club and still stay in the Prem. A curse on Ashley, Charnley and all who enable them.
Toon Evans(Quote)
Hardly “brutal”.
Brrrian(Quote)
Ref your comment that we’re no nearer completing a takeover – it must be so nice to be so well informed that you can say that.
The rest of us, not being in the room with Ashley, Kenyon, Cook and whoever else is in there trying to buy the club, don’t actually know what’s happening.
Please keep us informed.
Brrrian(Quote)