Rafael Benitez believes Newcastle United can “compete for everything” in the Premier League after leading the club to promotion.
Newcastle claimed the Championship title in Benitez’s first full season at St James’ Park to return to the top flight after a single year out of the Premier League.
The Spaniard has confirmed he is staying at Newcastle having received assurances from owner Mike Ashley over his transfer budget and Benitez insists the future can be productive for the club.
“When I start something I put all my passion into it,” Benitez told the Daily Mail. “I will try to do my best and hopefully everything will be fine.
“Things will be done in the right way and we can build what we want to build, a strong team and a strong club that can compete in the Premier League for everything.
“When I say everything, I don’t say the title, but why not? Everything means we have to be consistent. If you have the FA Cup, you can be there. It is not Rafa saying he wants to win the league, no. I want to be competitive and after we can win a trophy or you can win the league. You never know. It will be more difficult with every year, but for sure, you have to try.”
Newcastle had been favourites to book promotion from the Championship but Benitez accepted managing in England’s second tier for the first time in his career had been a challenge.
“It is more difficult than people think,” Benitez added. “The competition and the physicality of the game allows the other team to balance and neutralise you.
“You play against teams that you know are not better than you but physically they are stronger and they are very competitive. Every free-kick and every corner is a 50-50 situation and anything can happen.
“The other one is you play too many games. Sometimes two games a week, three games in 10 days, and then you don’t have time to recover physically and mentally. Mentally it is very demanding. It has been very hard in terms of football but it has been very easy in terms of putting everything behind the team: the city, the fans, the players, the staff.”
Benitez believes building togetherness at Newcastle was crucial to the team’s promotion, with three successive league wins at the end of the season pipping Brighton and Hove Albion to top spot in the final table.
“Was the club lost? I think it was a little bit disorientated, rather than lost,” Benitez said. “Lost is a big word. It means everything was wrong, and everything was not like this.
“The staff and the way things were going and how they were doing things was right. A lot of departments were right. You have to fix some things. They were capable to do it, it’s not that they couldn’t, they could do it, but I had to tell them, ‘Do it this way’.
“I knew from the beginning that we had to create a stronger bond between fans, city and team. You could see there was a lack of unity. We were trying to find a way. ‘Together we are stronger’ – that is the message I gave through the whole season.”
Source:Sports.yahoo