Rafael Benitez – A brighter future awaits, but is it still within reach?

I woke up this morning, turned on my laptop and checked the news – just in case. But no, it wasn’t a dream, we really had appointed a big-name manager.

The footballing world and its mother knew Steve McClaren was on a precipice, just waiting for Lee Charnley (or more likely Mike Ashley) to give him the final prod in the back to push him off.

The fatal shove was made at 11.30am yesterday, but effectively it had been made minutes after the disastrous defeat against AFC Bournemouth last Saturday.

The build up to the week that included defeat at Stoke, and culminated in the 3-1 reverse against the Cherries had been dominated by headlines and Twitter comments from journalists, and those in the know, that two losses for the Magpies would result in the removal of McClaren.

And so it proved.

All week rumours – in fact to be fair, they were more than that – were spreading faster than a bush fire in the Australian outback, that Benitez had been approached, and more surprisingly, the Spaniard had indicated an interest in taking on the seemingly impossible task of re-motivating a group of players on the crest of a slump, who looked resigned to their fate of impending Championship football just a week earlier.

Less than two hours after McClaren was pushed from the ledge, the drawbridge was dropped for Benitez to be welcomed across and officially given the keys to Castle St James’s.

Of course, the cover was blown prior to that, when the beaming Spaniard was filmed waving and shaking hands with all and sundry as he strode purposefully into Charnley’s office to sign the contract that had blatantly already been agreed hours – if not days – before, in principle.

The fact that Benitez was so keen to take on the job – as well as the lucrative contract offered to him – shows that all the pundits and doubters that say the this job is ‘a poisoned chalice’ and ‘no top manager would touch it with a barge pole’ are still completely out of touch when it comes to Newcastle United.

Whether it is the fans of other teams, that think they know us ‘glory seeking, trophy-demanding’ fans so well, or the equally naïve pundits who think we ‘expect success’ as a pre-requisite, the fact that a manager with the pedigree of Benitez wants to take the job just proves that Newcastle United IS still a draw in the football world.

So what next?

As first impressions go – not that he needed to make much of a one in the fans’ eyes – he made a pretty good one. I don’t mean the waving and smiling to the growing crowd of fans and media outside the ground as the news filtered through that he was here. I mean the one that showed him, before the ink dried on the contract, and barely an hour after emerging from St James’s Park, that showed him tracksuited and football-booted on the training pitch, having already called the plyers back from their day off, and putting them through their paces.

I am sure that he told them what he expected from them, and what they could expect in return. Regardless of whether he keeps us up, already, in his first few hours in the job, he has shown me the difference between a football manager, and a top-drawer football manager.

It appears that there will be no bedding in period for the ex-Liverpool and Real Madrid supremo. I have no doubt he will be in the dugout at the King Power Stadium on Monday, and I am certain it will be his team that runs out, not one provided to him on the advice of others.

I do want to say, though, that whether you liked him or loathed him, Steve McClaren is a decent human being. He may have done a pretty poor job of managing Newcastle United, but the man still did his best. He is still a man who deserved the dignity and respect to be told of the situation that was going on long before Charnley tried to belatedly tell him what he had already been told by messrs Ryder, Douglas, Edwards, Bird, Downie et al.

He was treated badly, but it seems that, sadly, this is the norm at NE1 4ST under the stewardship of Lee Charnley. He should be ashamed of letting the situation escalate the way it did, while not having the common decency of letting McClaren know what was happening.

But it is now time to look forward. We need some wins. We need some motivation. We need some belief. We were not getting any of those things under the previous management team, but the belief – certainly among the fans – has already returned, without a ball being kicked.

Should the players need any motivation, then the fact that Rafa has signed a 3-year deal means that, should he keep us up, then every single one of those players are playing for their futures, because (in my opinion, and which may become clearer after his press conference), make no mistake, Benitez held all the aces when being approached, and I refuse to believe that he took the job without demanding a proper manager’s role, not the hapless and failed Head Coach model previously used. This of course will mean more control, including deciding who stays, who goes and, more importantly, who comes in, regardless of whether they are over 26 or not.

Benitez’s record throughout his time managing in the Premier League is impressive. He boasts a 55.4 per cent winning record at Liverpool, and a 58.3 per cent one at Chelsea. In Newcastle’s current predicament, perhaps a more important statistic is that his record of defeats at Liverpool is just 22.6 per cent and at Chelsea is just 20.8 per cent.

Newcastle need points. If we’re not winning, we need to be grinding out draws. From those figures, it is not just coincidence that Benitez is the man they turned to. They have turned to a man who knows how to get results.

So the cogs for a brighter future are now in place. Regardless of the amount of money Newcastle have spent on players this season, this piece of business eclipses all of that. Should it have been done weeks ago? Of course it should, but it wasn’t. And as I said earlier, we now have to look forward, not back.

Let’s just hope there are enough games left for Rafa to have the desired and essential affect.