Newcastle United manager Rafael Benitez has claimed that the club’s target is simply to stay up this season.
The Magpies boss claimed that due to the spending power of their Premier League rivals, it will be much harder for the club to push on, with the Spaniard aiming to simply to stay in the division this season.
The Toon manager spoke to Chronicle Live about the club’s prospects this season.
“The reality is the Premier League is difficult and every year the others spend money and bring new players. You don’t know because we finished tenth this year we can be in the middle next season because everyone is spending,” he told the local outlet.
“We have to fix a target to stay up – that is it. Concentrate on staying up, and after that see where. It will be more difficult than last year. Fulham, Wolves are spending. Huddersfield, Brighton everyone is spending making it more difficult.
“Next year the target will be to stay up.”
The Spanish manager has signed three players this summer so far, spending just £3.6million on Martin Dubravka, with Kenedy joining on a season-long loan deal and Ki Sung-yeung arriving from Swansea City on a free transfer.
OPINION
Rafael Benitez is absolutely right, this is the harsh reality of where Newcastle United are at the moment. They may have signed three players so far this summer, but they haven’t actually strengthened their squad at all. The £3.6million signing of goalkeeper Martin Dubravka does nothing to improve the squad, as he was already there last season on-loan. The same goes for Chelsea midfielder Kenedy, who was also on-loan last season, so these transfers are simply maintaining the level they were at in the last campaign. The arrival of Ki Sung-yueng may look a good signing on the face of it, especially as a free transfer, but they lost an even better player in Mikel Merino this summer so the South Korean midfielder is just a replacement. The Toon need to sign players very quickly, otherwise, it’s going to be a very long season for the St. James Park faithful.