Sky pundit slates Rafa Benitez for making these TWO big mistakes at NUFC – Do you agree?

Jamie Redknapp believes that Newcastle players must be ‘running out of patience’ with Rafa Benitez’s ‘negative tactics’ – also claiming that it was a ludicrous decision to offload Dwight Gayle and bring in Salomon Rondon in his place.

It’s easy for Redknapp to say in hindsight, but I think he’s missing out some pretty key points here.

Gayle may be scoring, but he’s scoring in a league we all know he excels in. There’s no way on earth he’d have scored 8 goals in the Premier League as he has done in the Championship.

I think most of us accepted that Rondon fitted our system and the lone striker role much better than Gayle when the ‘loan swap’ happened, it’s just not worked as of yet – but I’m confident he’ll be more useful than Gayle was when he’s fit.

Here’s what he’s had to say during his latest piece for the Daily Mail:

“Why on earth did Newcastle let Dwight Gayle go on loan to West Brom? While his replacement Salomon Rondon has not scored in the league, Gayle has eight goals in his last 10 league games,”

“Newcastle struggled in front of goal once again in their home defeat by Brighton and the players must be running out of patience with Rafa Benitez.

“Newcastle’s players are not as bad as results and performances suggest but they are being hamstrung by their manager’s negative tactics.”

I really don’t get the whole ‘Gayle’s scoring goals in the Championship’ so we should’ve kept him.

He scored for fun in that league when we were in that division, yet he managed just 6 goals all season in the top flight last year. This is a tally Rondon has always bettered during his time in England with these interesting stats perhaps proving just how much Jamie Redknapp is getting carried away here by Gayle’s goals in the second tier.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not looking good for as long as Rondon’s injured and I’d like to have Gayle back in an ideal world, but I really think it’s quite shortsighted to say that this was always a barmy move by Benitez just because it hasn’t worked out as of yet.

As far as the players ‘running out of patience’ with Rafa is concerned, I’m pretty sure there’ll be very few hoping he’s sacked given how much of a downgrade any potential replacement would be under Ashley.

The ‘negative tactics’ line is also used by Jamie. He’s been guilty of it at times, but we had 70% possession and 27 shots on Saturday. What was missing was a lack of quality.

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About Olly Hawkins

As a Junior Magpie since birth and season ticket holder, I eat, sleep and breathe all things NUFC! Here at the blog, I aim to bring you news, views, match reports and transfer exclusives as and when I get them.

One thought on “Sky pundit slates Rafa Benitez for making these TWO big mistakes at NUFC – Do you agree?

  1. I think Rafa made it clear he did not want Gayle to go. He was over a barrel with no funds to buy a decent striker and WBA not willing to do business unless Gayle was part of the deal.

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