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It used to be that we’d measure Mike Ashley’s years in the remarkable, logic-defying decisions that had been taken by the Newcastle United owner.

Selling Andy Carroll on deadline day a few hours after club officials had repeatedly reassured reporters he was not for sale at any price. Appointing Joe Kinnear twice – the second time, informing Graham Carr and Derek Llambias in a down-at-heel pub in London over a few summer afternoon pints. Renaming St James’ Park after his sportswear company – prompting the busiest day of web traffic Sports Direct had ever had up to that point – to ‘showcase’ for a stadium sponsorship deal that never arrived. The compendium of catastrophic calls – and that just scratches the surface – read like a rap sheet against the owner.

But looking back at 2018, it has been a year of sometimes dizzying rhetoric where – to put it bluntly – nothing has happened. Newcastle went into the year with the football overshadowed by speculation surrounding a takeover that was viewed with cynicism by many supporters and that is how they end it. The uncertainty surrounding Rafa Benitez’s future remains after a year where he never really came close to walking away. Recruitment issues, training ground blueprints, Academy overhauls, supporter discontent, a team that is willing but limited and tactics that divide in the wider football world but inspire support from a loyal fanbase that backs Benitez almost uconditionally. For the year 2018 read the year 2017. Newcastle United in 2017 became the club where the big calls were kicked down the line to be discussed at a later date.

Not that the year didn’t pass without incident. Here’s how it played out.

January to March: Playing with fire

Newcastle’s year began as it ended – with familiar questions about Ashley and the club being taken over. Amanda Staveley was dismissed as a “time waster”, pulling down the whole pack of cards that had developed around the financier and her desire to broker a deal for Newcastle.

That it ended in acrimony might come as no surprise to those who felt her presence was always too forced and that her PR advisors briefed too much. One Newcastle official maintained from the off that she was a tyre kicker – not quite a fair reflection of how things played out but the reality of what was happening and what was said to be happening by people around her never quite tallied.

Staveley hit back with an interview in the Times where she spoke of her tears after hearing the way her approach was described on Sky Sports. She pledged to return in the summer – which did not happen. There was radio silence almost from the moment she broke hers.

It left Benitez – who had become frustrated by the way the takeover had swiped attention from his team’s travails and suspecting focus had been lost by his players – picking up the pieces in the transfer window. From nowhere the club approached him about a new deal, insisting that it was the right time to talk. Benitez, politely, insisted it was not – that transfers must take precedent.

(Image: Getty Images)

But with Ashley away on holiday for most of the month, getting answers and the green light for deals was difficult. Nicolai Jorgensen was the top target but Newcastle would not match Feyenoord’s valuation. Daniel Sturridge used United to get a better deal at West Brom. Benitez, having battled through initial scepticism, finally landed Martin Dubravka. He remains one of Newcastle’s best ever deals.

And while it took a while, slowly but surely plans for which the foundation was laid in the winter and autumn months began to pay off. Newcastle’s play was more expansive with loan signing Kenedy, they looked fitter and better drilled. And when the transfer window ended United earned their season-defining result – a 1-0 win over Manchester United that changed the agenda completely.

A few days before that match Benitez took to the stage at the Tyneside theatre to speak at the Times’ live podcast event. He carried the crowd that night, speaking with real enthusiasm and passion for the club, his career, his hopes for the future and why he was in Newcastle. Newcastle were about to drop into the bottom three but Benitez remained as popular as ever.

Before then it had been about whether Benitez had acted too hastily in selling Aleksandar Mitrovic – the player he was determined to cash in on to generate funds. By the end of the 90 minutes, United fans could see the sense in his desire to place the team above the individual.

(Image: Newcastle United)

The Spring revival: Optimism in the air

Benitez never believed Newcastle would be relegated. He never felt anything less than confidence that they would stay in the Premier League because his confidence in his methods – in the way that the players took on board his message and his staff reinforced it – is absolute.

There was an occasion in the early part of the season when Benitez, in an off-the-record briefing, said with certainty that the team would survive. United had just taken a point from Liverpool in a home game that suggested they could live with the Premier League’s heavyweights but still, it was disarming. He then proceeded to sketch out how the season would progress – struggle in the winter as the players hit a glass ceiling before a period in the winter where his squad rotation would mean Newcastle could make some ground before a strong finish. That it played out that way simply adds to the air that Benitez is a manager who is as comfortable in his skin at Newcastle as he’s ever been.

Still, those games against Southampton and Huddersfield at home – when United decisively struck out in front of the relegation pack – were wonderfully judged tactical plans. The master comprehensively out-thought the apprentice when Saints visited St James’ Park; Newcastle gained a measure of revenge on a poor Huddersfield team on a day when it felt like United regained the swagger of their early months. Benitez was in his element.

It got better. A win against Leicester was the high watermark – a day when Ayoze Perez’s wonderful goal provided Benitez with silent satisfaction that his faith in his compatriot was justified.

A tenth placed finish reflected the paucity of quality in the Premier League – Newcastle were comprehensively outplayed by Watford and Everton in that run-in – but they ended with a win over Chelsea that was every bit as comprehensive as the defeat of Spurs that came to be defined as the day Benitez tied his future to Newcastle.

For the Newcastle boss, the season’s conclusion was no fluke. The answer lay in the brown leather folder that is crammed with sheets of coloured data that analyse player condition, workloads, training sessions and – in meticulous detail – tactical plans. His small coaching staff work religiously off these models. It was no coincidence that as other teams tired or lost focus, Newcastle began to pick up the points to make the survival fight look like an irrelevance.

Those doubting how this season has unfolded – or is unfolding – would do well to remember Newcastle have never had a manager as meticulous.

(Image: PA)

A familiar summer

When West Ham parted ways with David Moyes, there was a frenzy of speculation that an approach for Benitez was imminent. Newcastle’s approach was to call the bluff of the Hammers and, if not Benitez himself then certainly the more voiceferous members of his entourage who have consistently made the Spaniard’s unhappiness at the way the club operates a matter for public consumption.

The upshot of a few days of serious fretting on Tyneside was that Benitez’s contract – the one he subsequently fired his agent for negotiating – made it financially punitive for him to agitate to leave, for West Ham to get him and for Newcastle to have to offer the Spaniard the assurances he was desperate to get to keep him at St James’ Park. It was a classic Newcastle United 2018 storm: it blew out as quickly as it had been generated – but not after taking its toll on a supporter base yearning for positive news in the close season.

That never arrived. Benitez had gone to meet Ashley in the close season alongside Lee Charnley and at first said the team needed new first team players for every position. Whether it was a negotiating tactic or he genuinely believed it, Ashley didn’t listen. When he whittled down the list to his three main targets – Craig Dawson, Salomon Rondon and Andros Townsend – he was effectively told that permanent deals for all three would be impossible given the long-standing constraints on spending at Newcastle. While United have loosened the philosophy that Carr worked to – that players over the age of 26 would only be considered in very exceptional circumstances – committing to a five year deal for Rondon, for example, at the age of 28 and asking for substantial wages was a non-starter.

Benitez seethed. Compromises put to him – players from Portugal or Spain’s La Liga that were not on his initial list – were rejected. He insisted on Rondon and sacrificed Dwight Gayle for him in a loan deal that made little sense other than a last resort to bring him the striker he had identified at the start of the summer. Yoshinori Muto was a January target signed belatedly because he satisfied the budget. Federico Fernandez was a late buy to cover Florian Lejeune’s absence: a deal Newcastle did at the manager’s request.

Reasonably Benitez’s contention is that at United that those in senior positions – Charnley or the owner’s eyes and ears Keith Bishop and Justin Barnes – do not have the football knowledge or experience that he possesses. While Ashley himself is something of a genius with figures – I remember Carr once recounting how the owners grasp of the numbers of transfer deals was remarkable – he knows nothing of the process of team building, character, tactics or the unique needs of a squad that can’t be quantified on the balance sheet.

(Image: Newcastle Chronicle)

Left alone you feel Benitez will build those things with the buys he’s allowed to make. He craves to be told a numerical budget that he can work with – ringing round contacts to tell them what he has and if they can provide players who fit into that finanical model. But Newcastle’s way is that individual targets should be sourced and a case made to Ashley for signing them. It means that a 21-year-old who costs £14million could be given the green light where a 29-year-old for £12million might not get through. That Ashley – who can’t possibly know why Benitez regards a 27-year-old Townsend whose value will obviously decline as a key part of the jigsaw – makes those calls is the fatal failing of his time at Newcastle. He does not know football and he does not defer to those who do.

If you add into the mix Benitez’s contractual situation - not the deciding factor that stopped deals from being done according to those at the club but a factor – the long, hard summer was perhaps not such a surprise.

And if fans wanted to know where the money had gone, so too did the manager. He did not believe some of the things he was told and railed against Charnley’s insistence on squeezing value from incoming and outgoing deals – sometimes with foundation and sometimes a shade unreasonably. He had lost faith and patience in Aleksandar Mitrovic but there was some sense in not accepting Fulham’s initial offers. The eventual deal that United struck was a big number – nearly £30million – but it pays in instalments, not satisfying Benitez’s need for money now to strengthen a team with familiar failings.

That culminated in his pre-season press conference in Portugal where the United manager admitted he was worried and said “everything is wrong” at Newcastle. Benitez’s battling the board during transfer windows is nothing new – his public exhortations for better backing seem a combination of his inability to ‘play the game’ that his predecessors did of pretending everything was fine and an attempt to force the hand of those running the club – but the pitch of this sparked the fan fury that was eventually to see the Magpie Group emerge from social media to become a high-profile, if flawed, fan movement.

Newcastle ended the transfer window with a small net spend and a team still carrying the same weaknesses of last season. It felt like a wasted, missed opportunity.

An autumn of discontent

Newcastle’s season opened with an encouraging performance against Tottenham but Benitez remained agitated. Rondon’s late arrival – the negotiations with West Brom proved tortuous, the player himself had no pre-season to fall back on – meant Benitez was relying on Joselu. An honest striker, Benitez had effectively relegated him to a back-up option at the end of the 2017/18 season. His last start in black and white was on January 31, 2018 yet the summer’s problems left him as their only option.

It felt like a mess: a second time under Benitez that Newcastle had opted not to react to a season of progress by allowing the manager a free rein to improve things. And Benitez’s reaction to place pragmatism ahead of everything else. Philosophy, style and the idea of developing players or systems for the future has been downgraded in the name of one thing: survival in the Premier League.

It explains the tactics, the lack of panache or flair and the way Newcastle have been turned into a side that prizes points – however won – ahead of everything else.

The long wait for a win increased tensions on Tyneside. Half way through that run, Mike Ashley’s re-emergence at matches – his first was a game at Crystal Palace which was dire – added intrigue off-the-field while the fare on it was lacking inspiration.

The pizza summit explained - by the owner of the restaurant NUFC went to

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Ashley’s return was a concerted effort by Lee Charnley to re-engage the owner with his football club: to attempt to bridge the gap between manager and the person who, ultimately, sanctions the spend. And it came after Ashley had met – and got on well – with some of the players after the bonus dispute was resolved.

If he knows the players and sees what is going on first hand, so the logic went, he would find it easier to empathise with requests for big money signings. It was – we were assured – a good thing that he was back, just as the pizza summit in Ponteland, where Ashley socialised with the players and management was.

When it was put to Benitez, he seemed pretty lukewarm about that idea. Nothing substantive was agreed with Ashley over pizza about his contract or transfers. Although the owner attended consecutive games and Newcastle won back-to-back matches at home, it didn’t appear to have the impact of thawing relations.

Points proved harder to come by and defeat by Brighton at St James’ Park left Benitez reeling as it was unexpected. National newspapers led on how much culpability Benitez should take for it but Newcastle never considered a change. Talk of Brendan Rodgers being tapped up was untrue. United have no Plan B if he goes.

Whether that would have been the case had they continued to falter is unclear – and thankfully, Benitez’s ability to pull out results saw Newcastle beat Bournemouth, Watford, Burnley and Huddersfield. United’s record against teams around them is excellent.

(Image: Getty Images)

Winter repeats?

While the football remains – to put it politely – functional, the return of takeover talk to Newcastle added a frisson of possibility to a dreadful year.

Ashley’s appearance on Sky News to suggest a takeover was “more advanced than it ever has been” set journalists, fans and even Benitez scrambling for more information. It says much that even some in senior positions at the club were surprised that he said it, even if they had witnessed first hand the due diligence being undertaken by groups.

Such is the toxic atmosphere and lack of trust that Ashley’s comments were met with cynicism by supporters. And while the tone of his message was clearly wrong – no Christmas deal was ever likely given that he was, in effect, sending out a message to consortia to ‘get on with it’ – there are things rumbling behind-the-scenes. Whether they will amount to anything is unclear, and Benitez is understood to be sceptical.

(Image: PA)

What hasn’t been explained is what exactly prompted Ashley to speak as he did given that senior club sources were saying in autumn that he was planning for the short and medium-term as manager. Indeed Ashley himself told the players at his Ponteland dinner that a change in ownership was unlikely this season – something that came with assurances that there would be help in the January window. Just like the idea that the Newcastle owner might be re-engaged by the club once more, it paints a confusing and maddening picture. Nothing at Newcastle while Ashley is there is ever straightforward.

Points continue to be accrued at a steady pace on the pitch but the need for reinforcements is clear. Benitez’s clarion call after the Fulham game – that it would be a “miracle” if Newcastle stayed up – should be viewed through the prism of the January window. Benitez always makes his point when he feels there is an issue worth fighting for and it reflected his exasperation with the attitude of those who make the decisions above him.

It also – whisper it quietly – was aimed at those supporters who wonder about Newcastle’s lack of style this season. Benitez’s counter argument appears to be: We go down playing any other way than this.

January appears to be on a knife edge and with it Benitez’s own future. While some will tell you he has made a decision to leave, that is not true. He is his own man. He will assess the situation at the end of the year and is desperate to stay. But not like this: not scrapping for every inch and being forced to play such reductive football.

The last word for the year goes to Benitez. After Burnley he addressed the two issues that had dominated Newcastle’s year, making his point in brilliantly effective fashion.

“When we talk about my future and what might happen we’re talking about the future of Newcastle United, not Rafa Benitez. In the end we sign players, I don’t take them home with me. They stay at Newcastle United,” he said.

This is the point. It is Newcastle United that should be the biggest issue, not Ashley, Charnley, Benitez or a takeover that may never happen. And the club is withering on the vine, with fans feeling hopeless and the atmosphere turning toxic. 2018 was a wasted year.