Newcastle United will offer Rafa Benitez a deal worth £15 million to keep him at the club, but the contract will only run for one year, according to The Sun.
The Spaniard is out of contract at the end of this season, and it is understood that Mike Ashley is willing to offer him a renewal worth around £240,000-a-week, plus survival bonuses.
It is believed that Ashley is pushing for a short-term deal to ensure that there are funds available to the manager to make signings this summer.
OPINION
This is a bit of a double edged sword really. On the one hand, a new contract is a new contract, and after months of praying this would happen, the Toon Army have to be delighted with Rafa putting pen to paper on any new deal. That being said, a one year contract is far from ideal, and ultimately means that we will have to go through this whole fiasco again in 12 months time. You can understand why Ashley might be trying to keep costs down with a shorter deal, with one eye firmly on the transfer market, but how can Benitez have the confidence or assurance to go into the window knowing that he only has another one year deal to work through? The club needs to be thinking long term, and continually handing the manager one are extensions every season is definitely not the way to do that.
