Newcastle United manager Rafael Benitez will be looking to bring in between four and five new signings to the club despite being hit with the bombshell of a minimal transfer budget, according to the Chronicle.
The newspaper claim on their website that the Spanish boss is keen to see a number of new recruits through the door as the club look to build on a 10th place Premier League finish, but that owner Mike Ashley is refusing to loosen the purse strings.
It is stated that Benitez will have to manage with a budget similar to the one he operated with last summer, when he was vocal in his frustrations over the club’s failure to sign his top targets, and it will be a bitter bombshell for the former Liverpool man, with only the potential sales of players offering any sort of hope for quality captures.
Opinion
Newcastle fans will be fuming to hear that Benitez is working off the same sort of transfer kitty he was 12 months ago, for the Magpies were a newly-promoted Championship side back then. They have gone on to pull off a quite astounding 10th place in the top flight which will hand them a tidy financial reward, not to mention the influx of television money, but it appears that is all going into Ashley’s pocket. Benitez did manage to bring in some good captures with the money he had available last summer, with Mikel Merino and Florian Lejeune looking like bargains for the fees that were paid, but the likes of Joselu, Javier Manquillo and Jacob Murphy all left much to be desired when featuring in the first team. If Newcastle want to solidify, or push on from, their top-ten finish, then the cash will need to be splashed, and it seems only offloading some of the current squad will provide Benitez with the means to do so.