OPINION
It has been a sad fact of Newcastle United’s season that there hasn’t been enough selection headaches for manager Rafael Benitez.
The Spaniard has had to muddle on with under-performing players like Mohamed Diame, Kenedy and Ayoze Perez because he’s not seeing enough from his fringe players on the training pitch.
The former Liverpool boss said as much to the Chronicle recently: “I want them to perform on the pitch in training to put me under more pressure. It’s what we have to do.
“I told the players on the bench to put me under more pressure. I want them to push me harder,” he finished and one of the players who needs to heed Benitez’s warning the most is winger Jacob Murphy.
The former Norwich City man has not produced enough since moving to St James’ Park to justify his selection, and he needs to work harder o the training ground in order to earn himself another chance in the starting line up.
It is not as if the wingers playing ahead of him are producing particularly sparkling football. Kenedy has been inconsistency personified this campaign, while Matt Ritchie has been solid but unspectacular on the opposite flank.
Murphy must be worried by the way his Magpies career has gone so far. The Englishman, on a reported £25,000-per-week at the club [Source: Spotrac], made 28 appearances in all competitions in his debut season on Tyneside last term but scored only one goal.
This year has seen him play just 232 minutes of first team football, contributing no goals or assists in what has been a lost campaign thus far.
There is a very real danger of Murphy’s Newcastle career coming to a quick end if he can’t rise to Benitez’s challenge. He’s not been good enough so far, but his manager has given him another – possibly final – chance to impress. He needs to take it.