OPINION
What every Newcastle United supporter wants at this moment in time is for manager Rafael Benitez to sign a new long term contract with the club.
The responsibility for that happening or not mostly lies with Magpies managing director Lee Charnley. However, it appears that not much progress is actually being made in his negotiations with the Spaniard.
The Northern Echo reported on Monday that Charnley is yet to sit down with Benitez or his representatives to outline what owner Mike Ashley needs to make a contract extension possible.
That, quite frankly, is absolutely baffling. Yes, the team’s Premier League status was only officially secured on Sunday, but you would have thought that some sort of sit-down would have occurred in the past few months.
If Benitez and his team still have no idea what Ashley’s point of view is then there’s a lot that’s going to need to be covered in just a couple of months.
The sort of back and forth that will be required to find a compromise between Ashley and Benitez will take time, and by Charnley not yet sitting down with the manager he’s putting huge pressure on the two men to find common ground extremely quickly. Now, does that seem likely considering they haven’t come to any sort of an agreement up to this point?
Any Newcastle fan reading the Northern Echo’s report will surely be up in arms, because all it does is indicate that Benitez could be off in the summer. It’s like the former Liverpool chief’s future isn’t even a priority for the Magpies hierarchy.
That in and of itself is bizarre, but Charnley needs to get his act together and sit down with the manager as quickly as possible. Otherwise Benitez could be off before he knows it.
