Newcastle United manager Rafael Benitez has revealed the reason why his team have such a dismal recent record in London.
The Magpies have lost on 17 of their last 23 visits to the capital, while Benitez has never won at the Emirates Stadium, where his team face Arsenal on Monday night.
But Benitez believes the reason for their struggles is simple: “I don’t think that these stats are something that you can say they are clear, or not clear,” he told The Chronicle. “If a team has a problem at home all the time for five years, OK, they have problems at home.
“But in this case, you are talking about going to London, where you can go against Tottenham, Chelsea, Arsenal and you can lose. Why? Because they are good teams; that’s the reason why. ‘London’ covers a lot of teams, and some of the teams are very good there.”
OPINION
It’s no surprise that Newcastle have a bad record in London, it’s likely that quite a lot of teams do badly when they head to the capital. There are plenty of top teams in the city, headlined by Tottenham, Chelsea and Arsenal. Even the tier of London sides below that one is filled with sides who can beat anyone on their day, such as West Ham United and Crystal Palace. So it shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone that the Magpies don’t fare too well when they travel down south. Benitez is right, we’re talking about top teams that Newcastle are coming up against when they go to London. It’s not easy to win away at Spurs, Chelsea, and Arsenal, or even Palace and West Ham. However, it is certainly something that the team will want to improve upon, and that starts on Monday. They need to get off to a good start against the Gunners otherwise they could be in for another long evening in the capital.
