Rafa Benitez has nine games to keep Newcastle United in the Premier League.
Benitez is famous for his meticulous approach to training and tactics, and even wrote a football blog during his time out of work.
Despite having a limited time to work with his new squad, you’d imagine the Spaniard would be hard at work drilling the under-performing Newcastle players to within an inch of their lives.
However, it appears Rafa is aiming to keep it simple.
“He just wants us to be more of a team and he keeps emphasising that we have to keep it simple, especially the position we’re in,” Magpies’ goalkeeper Rob Elliot said.
“Rafa wants us to play simple football, and work as a team, cover each other.”
“That’s it really, it’s been a message intended to relax us and get us focused on the run-in.”
“He’s not going to come in and change the football dramatically because he just wants us to keep it simple and work hard, but he also wants us to develop as a team – and most importantly start winning games.”
The Irish goalkeeper also revealed that Benitez had a special game plan for Newcastle’s 1-0 loss to Leicester City last Monday, and had hoped to play the league leaders at their own game.
“We wanted to come, sit deep and kill any space they had in behind and nullify the likes of (Jamie) Vardy and (Riyad) Mahrez,” Elliot said.
“But they got the goal from the set-piece, it wasn’t probably a foul in the first place, so it was disappointing to concede the goal – one, it not being a foul, two it being a bit of a scrappy goal from a set-piece.”
“We played well, looked disciplined and I thought we had a better shape about us.”
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