Newcastle United manager Rafa Benitez has rubbished questions over his team selection and believes that his team must simply work hard to get results.
The Magpies fell to their fourth successive Premier League defeat with a comprehensive 3-0 home loss to Watford on Saturday.
The heavy defeat left Newcastle in 13th place, with 14 points from their opening 13 matches, only four points off the bottom three.
Manager Benitez was questioned after the game about his team selection and formation, but the Spaniard rubbished any suggestions that personnel had anything to do with the loss.
As quoted by the Chronicle, Benitez said: “It’s not just a question of the shape of the team or the formation, it’s just a question of understanding that we are a team that has to work very, very hard if we want to get results. That’s what we have to do.”
“We were [playing 4-5-1] before with one striker and still we were complaining about, ‘We need to play with two strikers’.
“Now we are playing with two strikers and losing games, we are saying, ‘Mmm…’. We have to realise that we are a team that has to work hard from now until the end of the season.
“They are working hard, but in the second half when we conceded, we were a little bit disorganised. We have to go back to the principles that [we had when] we were compact, we were working as a unit. It doesn’t matter if you play with two strikers or one striker if you are compact enough to defend and attack.”
OPINION
Maybe Benitez is right, but Newcastle fans are slowly beginning to ask questions about the Spaniard’s team selections. Having Benitez as manager at St. James’ Park has always been viewed as a coup by the fans, with the Spaniard having been in charge of some of the world’s biggest clubs. But now noises are starting to emerge about the 57-year-old’s team selections, especially when it comes to Newcastle’s forward line. His insistence on playing Joselu, in turn with his persistent snub of Aleksandar Mitrovic, is starting to get to fans. Joselu’s failure to make an impact against Watford is the latest in a long line of disappointing displays, and Benitez might have to start looking at personnel as the issue, not work rate.