RAFAEL BENITEZ will hold face-to-face talks with Mike Ashley in the next fortnight after a telephone conversation with the Newcastle United owner left him feeling “positive” about the future.

Ashley phoned Benitez yesterday morning to congratulate him on his side’s successful promotion to the Premier League and set up a meeting to discuss transfer plans ahead of a return to the top-flight.

The pair have barely spoken during Benitez’s year-long spell at the helm at St James’ Park, and the simmering tensions in their relationship bubbled to the surface on Monday when Newcastle’s manager refused to commit his long-term future to the club in the wake of securing promotion.

Benitez once again refused to discuss his future plans yesterday, but struck a much more upbeat note when confirming his intention to meet Ashley in person to discuss this summer’s transfer business.

The Spaniard will request up to £100m in order to overhaul the current Magpies squad, and is optimistic he will be able to strike a working relationship with Ashley despite the sportswear magnate’s reputation for wanting a major say over the way in which his money is spent.

“I have been talking with Mike, and we have decided we will meet next week or in ten days or whatever, it depends on the schedule,” said Benitez, whose side play their penultimate game of the season when they travel to Cardiff City tonight. “But we have already been working on football.

“I have been talking with Lee and I said, ‘Lee, we have to progress with pre-season’, and I said I needed to give him some football information. I was talking about injuries because we have players we have to sort out now, sooner rather than later, and my future is my conversations with Mike.

“Everybody is expecting, ‘How much money’ – all these questions depend on the conversation. We will see where we are.

“At the moment, I am quite positive, the conversation was quite positive. He was congratulating me, the staff and everyone.

“He’s the owner, so it depends on him what we will do. He needs to know my ideas, and I need to know what he is thinking. We have to talk about everything. I am a professional, he’s a businessman, and he knows his business, so it’s simple.”

Sadly, when it comes to Newcastle United and Ashley, things are rarely simple, but having been given a relatively free hand as he assembled a squad capable of winning promotion last summer, Benitez is hoping he will be afforded similar freedom when the transfer window reopens.

He will insist on the final say over all transfer matters, and while he is willing to work within Ashley’s preferred parameters wherever possible, he will seek the right to stray beyond the confines of previous transfer diktats if he feels it will improve Newcastle’s prospects. He could also request a more marginal role for Graham Carr, the 72-year-old chief scout who has been integral to Newcastle’s previous concentration on the French market.

He will not demand a carte blanche, however, and having worked at a number of Europe’s leading clubs, accepts there has to be a degree of give and take in any relationship between a manager and his club’s owner.

“I’m not the kind of manager who will say, ‘I want this – and that is it’,” said Benitez. “I will try to argue why – why you need this and that. I will give my ideas and explanations.

“It is very easy to convince someone because you are talking football and about what is best for the team. The fans want a fantastic team, and we want the same – the owner, as a businessman, wants the best for this club, and the best for his club is to be successful, to stay in the Premier League and then maybe challenge for trophies.

“It is very simple – we have the same idea, the same objective. Then the way to achieve this is something I have to explain. I have to explain my ideas and he has to tell me (his).”

Benitez will deliver a list of potential targets, but is also willing to consider selling players if it will help with the overall reshaping of the squad. A number of players were signed solely to aid this season’s promotion push, and could find themselves surplus to requirements now promotion has been achieved.

“How much money have we to spend? What can we do if we sell players? Which players will stay, which players will leave? These questions that you ask me, we will have to wait,” said Benitez. “All my life I have worked to a business plan, it is what you have to do.

“The question is where we are, how much money, can we do it with money if we sell players, which players are good enough, which players do we have to change? Things like that, the manager normally knows. Then you have to talk to the managing director every day.”

The more immediate priority is this evening’s trip to Cardiff, and while Newcastle could still prise the title from Brighton if they win their final two games, Benitez will rest some of the players who have been carrying slight knocks.

Jamaal Lascelles, Matt Ritchie, Grant Hanley and Vurnon Anita have all been ruled out, while Dwight Gayle remains sidelined with a hamstring injury and is unlikely to play again this season.

Newcastle (probable, 4-2-3-1): Elliot; Yedlin, Mbemba, Clark, Dummett; Shelvey, Colback; Atsu, Perez, Gouffran; Mitrovic.