Shadow of history casts dark clouds at Newcastle as Rafa Benitez is left to lament transfer failures

The Spaniard has vented his frustrations against the Magpies' lack of success in this summer's transfer window and could now be walking a well-trodden path towards the exit door

Rafa Benitez has struggled to take the club forward after clinching promotion last season (Getty)

From jubilation to growing alarm: just another three months in the life of Newcastle United. It has hardly been a secret that Rafa Benitez is concerned with a transfer window that has failed to significantly strengthen the side he led back to the Premier League.

He spoke today, in-depth, for the first time about the frustration that has seen momentum stop at the club he took to the title. There was no mention that it was not quite like the brochure, as Kevin Keegan had so famously said so many years previously, but it felt like that.

“I am not happy,” he said. “I am not happy with what we did, but at the same time for me it's a challenge. I try to do my best.

"At the end of the season we were ready. Then we tried to sign the players we wanted to at this time. We couldn't do it, for different reasons. Now we are going a little bit late, the market is crazy and it’s not a question of money. Sometimes the money is there but the players are not available.

“Am I happy with the way that we did things? No. Am I frustrated? Yes. But at the time same time I am trying to be positive. I am fully committed to the fans, the club, my players. I try to manage and to improve the squad with the players who are available to make sure we are stronger than we are now. I don’t know by how much but I will try to do my best.”

He was asked about his future and if there was any danger of him leaving.

Rafa Benitez has grown frustrated by Newcatle's lack of success in the transfer window (Getty)

“It’s very difficult because my Chinese is not good enough!” he joked (there has been reported interested from clubs in China). “I am trying to do my best now, it has to be something that you can control but at the moment I am fully commitment to do the best I can now.”

It is the shadow of history that is causing concern, and there remains an undercurrent of 2008, when the Newcastle owner Mike Ashley failed to back the then-manager Keegan. “We have good characters and we’ll spend the next couple of days doing our very best to bring quality players in,” Keegan had said at the end of August. They were the last words he ever said as Newcastle manager.

Keegan, the most important figure in Newcastle’s modern history, eventually sued the club successfully for constructive dismal.

Kevin Keegan eventually lost the support of owner Mike Ashley (Getty Images)

He had wanted to build a team to compete way beyond the relegation safety scrap, as is now the case with Benitez and to that end came a damning warning from Alan Shearer.

“He went to the Championship knowing that his job was to get the club back into the Premier League, then thinking he could go one-step further and build and get bigger and better,” said the former Newcastle captain. “That’s what he wants and if he’s not able to do that he won’t be there for much longer.

“He will have to have signs of bringing more players in, and I think it’s a big two or three weeks regarding bringing a few more in. He needs that, there’s no doubt about it. I think there’s definitely a frustration there from him, having spoken to him.

“They’ve been in for a lot of players and they’ve missed out on a lot of players.”

Benitez was unable to land Townsend last January (Getty Images)

Benitez’s anger is not new. He wanted Andros Townsend and James McCarthy in January (with the £30m profit he had made in the previous window) and he had four deals lined up as soon as the current window opened (Tammy Abrahams and Pepe Reina were amongst them). He has not been able to sign six of the players he has coveted in the past seven months. That is more than half a team.

Instead, Newcastle have signed four new players (plus making Christian Atsu’s loan deal permanent). It does not feel anything like the strengthening Benitez imagined when he left his four-hour meeting with Ashley days after winning the Championship title in such dramatic fashion.

The team that faces Tottenham on Sunday will not feel much different to the one that played in the Championship.

“Rafa will have them hard to beat, he’ll have them organised and well-drilled, but Rafa wants to be bigger and better than that,” added Shearer.

"It has been a frustrating summer for him. At the end of last season, Mike Ashley said he would give every penny he had to Rafa. I don't know if that has been the case.”