‘The Castration of Rafa Benitez’

As the saga of Rafa‘s Contract continues to play out like a bad pantomime it wouldn’t have surprised me if Widow Twanky turned up at Rafa’s press conference this weekend to field any questions about a new contract shouting “Oh no he isn’t!” or “Oh yes he is!”

I have no doubt at all that Ashley stitched Rafa up with an airtight contract that would have cost Rafa his soul, a large sum of money and maybe even his first born child, if he had quit the Toon before the end of this coming June.

I’d also guess that there’s a healthy end of contract bonus waiting for the Spaniard, not to mention a tidy tip for keeping us up again.
If I was Ashley I’d also have Rafa on a percentage of season ticket revenue gathered before he goes – consider it a gag order.
You can say what you like about Ashley but he took a gamble on not buying players, preferring to invest in Rafa instead, and he managed to convert that 5 million pound wager into 160 million.

Smart cookie!

So could there be another reason why Rafa’s hanging around singing the praises of the club, the players, the fans, the city, the Metro and just about anything else within a 5 mile radius of SJP? He could be standing as an MP, but I doubt he could suck up to the fans to the level that’s apparently required for that.

Trying to come up with an analogy that best describes Rafa’s situation I toyed with many ideas but avoided most so as not to introduce unsavoury topics to this particular rant.Looking at Rafa’s current situation takes me back many years to the Easter school holidays when at the tender age of 10 I helped out with the lambing on my uncle’s farm.

Not long after they are born the male lambs are castrated. This is done with what is essentially a very tight rubber band which is expanded with a special pair of pliers and slipped over the lambs “boys”, cutting off the blood flow. At the time this is done the lambs are, understandably, not too chuffed and head off in the general direction of away, bleating like someone had just, well, done what someone had just done.
After a while without blood circulating, his little sweetmeats just drop off, mission accomplished.
What is rather odd though, is that once this has happened the lamb invariably staggers back, as if it wants more!

Yes – this was the least unsavoury analogy I could come up with.
I’d have thought that at the end of last season Rafa would have figured out that, effectively, the rubber band had been applied and it was only a matter of time before gravity took it’s toll, and his boys dropped to the turf for all to see.

If that wasn’t bad enough it appears that now he’s considering hanging round to sign up again so that Ashley can have another crack at his nether region.

Why would someone of Rafa’s stature do that? He’s not gullible. He’s been doing this long enough to know when he’s being played.

Yes, it’s possible that being the consummate professional that he is, he’s just hanging on until after the game against Fulham, at which point he’ll let us know that he’s on his way, but is there another possibility that we’re missing here?

Digressing a tad, we all remember the excitement whipped up by the December news that we were up for sale and there was a possibility that Big Mike would be on his way in the new year, and of course, all would again be wonderful in the cosmos?
That never happened, and logically was never likely to happen at the time. Buying a Premiere League club half way through a season when it’s flirting with the relegation zone is like trying to buy an aircraft half way through a flight when the pilot’s unconscious – he had the fish – and the co-pilot is Scooby Doo.
Everybody loves Scooby Doo but the value of your offer for the plane has to take a couple of minor issues into consideration.

The negotiation might go something like this.
“OK – I appreciate you bought the A380 for 230 million quid but I can only offer you a couple of grand for scrap. This is based on the fact that the day of the 4 engined super-jumbo is over, the current market value of 4 used, flat Rolls Royce Trent engines which would be spread over miles of mountainous terrain, and the not to be forgotten fact that said Airbus A380, is currently at 38,000 feet with a cartoon Great Dane at the controls”.

Well, against all odds, Scooby (and those pesky kids) has landed the plane, it’s in one piece and you’ve now got plenty of time to change the oil and pump up the tyres before the next flight. Now’s the time to make your offer.

Is it possible that, now we are safe for another year, there is actually a pukka sale in progress and Rafa is delaying an announcement about his future until he sees how it goes?

I can’t really see any other circumstances under which Rafa would commit to another contract with the Toon. He has chosen his words very carefully. He has told us it has to be right, but Ashley has shown us that his interpretation of right revolves around not actually spending money. Rafa has told us he can see himself managing in the prem for another 10 years. That would practically rule out Newcastle with Ashley in charge.

Yes, as he has said many times, the club has potential but Rafa is no mug, and experience tells us that once Rafa puts pen to paper Ashley will appear from behind the curtain with a big pair of pliers and an even bigger, even tighter elastic band.

Watch out Rafa. “HE’S BEHIND YOU!”