Steve Bruce blasts Benitez as Jones departs

Aug 13 2010 by Stuart Rayner, The Journal

RAFAEL Benitez has been accused of wrecking Kenwyne Jones’ Sunderland career in a fruitless attempt to save his job at Liverpool as Tony Pulis revealed the lengths the Black Cats went to in order to offload him.

Stoke City bought Jones for £8m on Wednesday. The price-tag seemed a good one for the inconsistent Jones, but will not be paid in full until 2014, with Sunderland subsidising his wages in the meantime.

Steve Bruce always had a strained relationship with Jones, whose outstanding performances were far outweighed by lacklustre ones. But the Black Cats manager pinpointed Christmas as the moment when Jones’ attachment to the club he joined in 2007 was loosened.

At the time, he accused Benitez of unsettling Jones (pictured below) with his very public courting of the striker, who he claimed to want to take on loan.

Bruce thinks it was an attempt to salvage a job that the Spaniard eventually lost in May.

“It all started at Christmas with the Liverpool debacle,” he said. “Whether that turned his head I’m not too sure. I think the timing was right.

“Sometimes you go past your sell-by date. With Kenwyne, on his day, we all know he can be unplayable. But for me I wanted it repeatedly, every day and he found that difficult in the end here. I wish him the best of luck, I really, really do but think it (his departure) is best for both parties.

“The Liverpool thing was genuinely a load of rubbish. It was absolute total and utter nonsense.

“It was Rafa Benitez looking after himself, saying, ‘This is all I can do, I’ve got no money, look at me, I’m poor Rafa, I’m having to get a Sunderland striker on loan,’ and used the situation.

“ There was never a chance he was going to go to Liverpool. No chance.” The £8m fee for Jones is £2m more than Stoke paid Middlesbrough for defender Robert Huth last season, although it will be spread over the length of his four-year contract.

Jones’ Sunderland wages were thought to be around £60,000 a week, which is 50% more than the previous highest earner at the Britannia Stadium.

The Black Cats are thought to have given Jones a “golden handshake” to facilitate the move.

“The wages he was earning at Sunderland we could not afford,” said Pulis. “He was on quite a bit of money, but he is not on that at Stoke.

“So they have looked after that as well to enable him to come down to the structure we have at this club, which is very important for us.” Sunderland would no doubt have preferred the details to remain secret, but Pulis said: “I don’t want anybody within the club or from outside thinking they can walk in here and their demands are going to be this, that and the other.”

Meanwhile, Bruce has surprisingly overlooked Michael Turner when appointing a new club and team captain.

Lee Cattermole will wear the armband on the pitch, while Boudewijn Zenden will take an off-field role. Lorik Cana held the captaincy before leaving for Galatasaray in the summer.

“Lee epitomises everything a manager looks for in a team captain,” said Bruce, a former skipper at Manchester United. “He always shows passion, pride and commitment to the cause.”

Of multi-lingual Zenden, whose CV includes Barcelona, he said: “Bolo has been a huge influence in the dressing room, often acting as a link between the management and the players.”