By Chris Dunlavy
NEWCASTLE won't just win the Championship this season – they'll batter all-comers like a drugged-up Russian wrestler. Only their stimulant of choice won't be a steroid or growth hormone. It will be the millions of Mike Ashley and the rigour of Rafa Benitez.
Has any side ever fallen from the Premier League in finer fettle? Has any set out with shorter odds? At 4-6, the bookies peg a Toon promotion as more likely than a Usain Bolt victory in Rio, and Friday night's inauspicious debut against Fulham is just a blip.
This division has sucked plenty of giants beneath the surface, their reputation and history no more use than a pair of concrete slippers.
Leeds, Sheffield Wednesday, Nottingham Forest, most recently, Wigan, Wolves and Bolton, have all suffered the dreaded double drop. None has yet returned.
Such were the doom-laden proclamations as Newcastle's misfiring army of mercenaries sleepwalked towards oblivion last term.
Men like the workshy Moussa Sissoko, whose only goal was to impress a “beautiful” club like Arsenal. Like £12m waif Florian Thauvin, present in body but mentally back in Marseille.
Both were examples of Ashley's misplaced trust in chief scout Graham Carr, who fluked a load of signings in 2011, seized control of transfer policy and spent the next five years foisting useless French lightweights on a succession of managers.
The apotheosis arrived last season, when £80m worth of new players – only Manchester City spent more failed to avert relegation.
Had Ashley persisted with this futile enterprise, relegation to the Championship would have been a disaster. But, from the moment Benitez agreed to stay, implored by his teenage daughters after they witnessed the adoration of the Toon Army, the dark clouds over St James' vanished.
It wasn't just that Newcastle had a world-class manager for the first time since Bobby Robson was shamefully put to pasture by Freddie Shepherd.
It wasn't just that the Spaniard – who started the season at Real Madrid – had taught a clueless rabble the art of defending in a mere ten games.
It was his cold-blooded insistence on complete control. Steve McClaren, Alan Pardew and John Carver were happy to be pushed around.
Benitez, a Champions League winner and shrewd politician, is nobody's patsy.
He wouldn't be handed Carr's cut-rate duds. He would not tolerate cut corners.
He wouldn't sit silently while Ashley turned Newcastle into Sports Direct, a place where the bottom line begets all manner of mistreatment.
He demanded an overhaul of the academy and medical staff. He insisted on better relations with the media. Critically, he refused anything but a final say on every single transfer.
Ashley, realising that Benitez represented the best hope for salvaging his investment, acquiesced. A businessman to the bitter end.
Now, the Magpies have players who see the club not as a stepping stone but the pinnacle of their careers. Who won't scurry back to France at 6pm every Saturday. Who want to fight. Matt Ritchie and Grant Hanley may lack the star power of Gigi Wijnaldum, but they've energised supporters in a way the Dutchman never did.
David Dimbleby once said of Michael Heseltine's scathing 1986 attack on Margaret Thatcher that he “picked up the Conservative Party, shook it, and put it down where he wanted it”.
Much the same could be said of Benitez's impact at Newcastle.
In just six months, the 56-year-old has become a powerful ally to Toon fans, the man who usurped a tyrant, scattered his minions and returned a sense of self-respect.
One who signs the kind of players they want, not the kind who will sell for double two years down the line. Who wants to win matches, not help his boss recoup cash.
That image may be illusory as Ashley still reigns supreme. But its unifying effect has been more profound than anything since the first Kevin Keegan era, and we all know what happened then.
If Ashley keeps his nose out – and everything he's achieved in football suggests that would be wise – it is impossible to imagine anything but a Champagne-soaked spring for the Toon.
