BBC Sport pundit Mark Lawrenson believes Newcastle United owner Mike Ashley won’t give manager Rafael Benitez the transfer war chest he desires.
Benitez has been at loggerheads with the Sports Direct tycoon throughout his time at St James’ Park and likely will be again this summer if the Spaniard stays. However, Lawrenson does predict the Magpies will triumph 2-1 over Fulham on Sunday.
“The big questions, as ever, for the Magpies are will manager Rafa Benitez stay, and will he get the money that he wants to spend?,” he wrote on the BBC Sport website. “I think the answers are ‘yes’ and ‘no’… but he will get some of it, and enough to make some more improvements to his squad.
“We already know Magpies owner Mike Ashley is never going to splash the cash, because he could give Benitez £100million and he is realistically only going to finish seventh, at best. That is Ashley’s way of thinking. He is a businessman and Newcastle made an £18.6million profit last season, so he is never going to agree with the fans urging him to spend.”
OPINION
Lawrenson makes a lot of good points here actually. A lot of what he says probably is what Ashley is thinking. He’ll be aware that there is a bit of a glass ceiling separating the Premier League’s top six from everyone else. Aside from the odd Leicester City miracle the big six are pretty firmly entrenched where they are. Having said that, you have to consider that two of the current top six were never part of the old ‘big four’. Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester City weren’t really in that group 10 years ago. So while Ashley’s viewpoint, as put forward by Lawrenson, makes sense, there is evidence to suggest that with a world class manager and sufficient investment that a team could gatecrash the Premier League’s status quo. Newcastle already have the world class manager in Benitez, but they’ve never had the proper investment in the transfer market since he’s been at the club. So you could look at it two ways, but there’s no doubt what side of the coin Ashley is likely on.
