Premier League: Newcastle struggle to sign new players

Newly-promoted Newcastle have not been doing much transfer business so far this summer and manager Rafael Benitez admits that they had difficulties in concluding deals for the players that they wanted. They have signed just two players so far this summer, Christian Atsu from Chelsea for 6.2 million pounds and Florian Lejeune from Eibar for 8.7 million pounds, plus youngsters Stefan O'Connor and Josef Yarney on free transfers. The squad reunited for pre-season training last week and manager Benitez had hoped to have most of the transfers done by then. "The top sides have a lot of money and the others are spending too," Benitez said. "It's not easy for a lot of teams because the market is a little bit crazy. We have to try to do our best. We know where we are - that is not ideal because everybody wants to see a lot of players signing already - but we have to keep working and see what we can do." Newcastle owner Mike Ashley had previously said that Benitez and managing director Lee Charnley can use all the income of the club for signing new players, roughly around 100 million pounds. Benitez added: "We can do nothing other than just keep working to find the players that we want, and hopefully we can do it." Newcastle were the biggest spenders in the Championship last summer, splashing around 50 million pounds on transfers ahead of the successful campaign which saw them get promoted to the Premier League. The most expensive transfer was forward Dwight Gayle, Newcastle paid around 12 million euros to sign him from Crystal Palace, and he scored 23 goals in 34 appearances last season. Newcastle are 1/5 at Bet365 to avoid relegation from the Premier League next season.