Lee Charnley will lead the hunt for Rafa Benitez’s replacement and looks set to look for a “young promising continental manager” according to North-East reporter Martin Hardy.
His piece rules out a move for Gary Monk and ex-NUFC bosses Chris Hughton and Alan Pardew, claiming that Charnley is ‘well-connected outside of Britain’ and likes the idea of a young, foreign coach.
We’ve seen Wolves, Southampton/Spurs and Watford do well under Nuno Santo, Javi Gracia and Mauricio Pochettino respectively – the sort of hidden gems we may now be looking to bring in – but I have my doubts whether Charnley is competent enough to pull this off.
Nevertheless, here’s what Martin Hardy’s had to say in his latest piece for OffThePitch.com, claiming the club are ‘highly unlikely’ to look at ‘high profile’ , ‘big-earning’ bosses like Rafa:
Managing Director at Newcastle United, Lee Charnley, will lead the hunt for Rafael Benitez’s replacement, but it seems highly unlikely that Newcastle will return to the kind of high profile, big-earning manager that Benitez was.
Charnley is well-connected outside Britain and it seems likely he would fancy a young promising continental manager.
That would appear to rule out Jose Mourinho and Arsene Wenger who have both been mentioned in relation with the position in the last month.
Instead, having developed strong contacts on the continent over recent years, and watched the emergence of young, foreign coaches, Newcastle and Charnley could go down that route.
It sounds good in theory, even if any new manager is almost certain to be a significant downgrade on Rafa Benitez, but I have little faith in Lee Charnley here.
I’d also question how he’s ‘well-connected’, although it would be nice to see him proves us wrong – especially when you consider the mess we’ll find ourselves in if a takeover fails to materialise and Rafa’s replacement struggles to hit the ground running.
