The Chronicle’s Lee Ryder believes Rafa Benitez is now “very frustrated” – stating he’s ‘desperate’ to stay at the club but unable to sort a new contract or crack on with his summer transfers after seeing takeover-talk take over.
Ryder also claims that the Bin Zayed Group haven’t responded to the Chronicle when asked ‘would they still be interested in keeping Rafa Benitez’.
It’s worth saying that there’s been several claims insisting the BZG plan to keep Rafa at the club if any takeover goes through, but talk of them failing to answer that question only adds to the uncertainty.
Here’s what Lee has had to say on the Chronicle’s site, with the clock now ticking over Rafa’s contract and us losing valuable time in the transfer window:
“Rafa Benitez is desperate to commit his future to Newcastle,”
“We did approach the people in the Middle East and said ‘would they still be interested in Rafa Benitez being manager?’, and we haven’t had a response on that yet.
“It’s still early days as far as the manager is concerned. Newcastle have been in negotiations with Rafa, but this changes everything slightly, because they might have another man lined up to come in and take the job, they might have different ideas.
“Every day that goes on is another day wasted in the (transfer) window; other clubs, they’re pushing on, they’re signing players.
‘Newcastle are falling behind slightly. So for Rafa, he’ll be very frustrated at the moment.”
A penny for Rafa’s thoughts in all of this.
It’s now two weeks ago yesterday that we heard reports saying he’d met with Mike Ashley in London to hold crunch talks over a new contract.
A fortnight later and not only has nothing been signed as far as any new deal is concerned, takeover talk has completely taken over since last Sunday, meaning his future and his summer transfer plans are bound to have stalled somewhat.
The Bin Zayed Group seem pretty adamant about their hopes of completing a deal, but it’s time the club spoke out to let us know exactly what’s going on.
We’d all love to see a takeover, but tomorrow marks the start of June – and Rafa’s contract expires on the 30th.
Love it Olly – Ryder also reveals that the Bin Zayed Group haven’t responded to the Chronicle when asked ‘would they still be interested in keeping Rafa Benitez’.
Why would they respond to the Chronicle? It’s a bit like that crazed MP woman keeps saying Ashley didn’t respond to this and Ashley didn’t respond to that. Why should he?
I’m sure the Bin Zayed group are getting thousands of emails a day from hundreds of websites.
Who cares?
Briiian(Quote)
It’s like they’ve aggregated all the worst sports journalist and assembled together on the Chronicle. Worst among them is Lee Ryder!
Repeating the same thing again and again.
Cilha(Quote)