Newcastle United boss Rafa Benitez ideally would have wanted striker Dwight Gayle to remain at the club this summer, according to reliable journalist Chris Waugh.
The journalist – who is known as a Newcastle reporter for the Chronicle – claimed on his personal Twitter account that the Spaniard wanted his first-teamer to remain at St James’ Park to provide competition for any new arrivals at the club.
Instead Gayle – who is on £40,000 a week at United (Spotrac) – is likely to move to West Brom today, making way for incoming striker Salomon Rondon in a swap deal.
The Gayle-Rondon swap deal makes sense for all parties – just frustrating it's dragged on for so long. Ideally Rafa would have liked to have kept Gayle & then had more competition, & the fact Rondon isn't permanent once again raises questions about #nufc's lack of summer spend
— Chris Waugh (@ChrisDHWaugh) August 6, 2018
OPINION
This is an interesting point – the fact that Benitez ideally wanted to keep Gayle on Tyneside to provide competition shows just how much of a good manager he is. Gayle may not have the most prolific of goal tallies, but that would not matter as he would just be providing the competition to the new players. On his day he can be outstanding but he is not good enough to be an out-and-out Premier League forward anymore, meaning that a move to the Hawthorns was the best thing for him to do. However, having him there as a back-up would have calmed Benitez’ fears a little, as Rondon’s move to Tyneside is only temporary. There is no guarantee that either party will want to make the move a permanent one, and this potential outcome could put Benitez into an even more worrying predicament regarding his strike force. It would have been nice to see Gayle remain at the club, but fingers crossed his time at the Baggies goes according to plan.
