If you can kick ball forward they ask £10m, says Benitez

Rafael Benitez

…put the ball in the net, it’s £20 million

It is a crazy world out there in the transfer market. And to Newcastle United Manager, Rafa Benitez, it is also a frustrating world. The Spaniard, who returned the Magpies to the Premier League this season has found it difficult to get the players he requires to make the Goodies competitive.

He accepts that many of his unwanted players are destined for the Championship, rather than the Premier League, and thinks it is now a game of cat and mouse.Benitez claims that this is a period of time when second tier clubs wait and try to get signings on cheaper wages than they would maybe need to pay to attract them any earlier.

As for Newcastle’s specific problems, the manager sees players at the club who are on ‘good (Premier League?) salaries’ but Premier League clubs don’t see them as good enough.

Any number of players are clearly up for sale as Rafa Benitez tries to raise cash and cut down his squad, the likes of Krul, Lazaar, Riviere, Hanley, Colback, Haidara, Darlow just the tip of the black and white iceberg.

When trying to bring in the players that he needs to do a job in the Premier League, Rafa repeated ‘The market has changed and prices are so high…’.As an illustration he says it is a £10m price tag if a player can ‘kick the ball forward’ and then that doubles ‘if you put the ball in the net’.

“The Championship teams, normally what they do now is that they wait. They wait because of wages – if they buy the player one week or two weeks after, they don’t need to pay the same wages.“We have some players who maybe have good salaries for the Championship while maybe Premier League teams are not interested – that is the situation’’.

“The market has changed and prices are so high. If you can kick the ball forward, they will ask for £10m – if you put the ball in the net, it’s £20m.”