RAFAEL BENITEZ has described how the prospect of taking his Newcastle United project on to new heights doesn’t only revolve around improving a squad which has successfully preserved Premier League status for a further year.

It has been well documented and written about how Benitez, who is set to enter the final 12 months of his contract this summer, is looking for assurances over the club’s ambitions before committing to an extended stay on Tyneside.

The Spaniard’s advisors are still talking to Newcastle’s managing director Lee Charnley in a bid to hear the answers that should lead to him signing fresh terms, given how Charnley is leading the discussions on Mike Ashley’s behalf.

Ashley is understood to want Benitez to stay, and quite understandably given the way he has managed to steer Newcastle up to tenth ahead of tomorrow’s final match of the season with Chelsea – even though he has hardly spent any money on the squad compared to the rest of the division.

That is not how Benitez wants life at Newcastle to be and, knowing how his reputation remains high after being shortlisted for the Premier League manager of the year award, he wants the backing from above to continue the Magpies’ revival.

Further investment in the squad is seen as essential, but the former Liverpool manager has also reiterated how he wants to see the club’s infrastructure change too.

“In modern football you have to improve the academy because the money, everyone is so expensive you have to bring your own players through,” he said.

“That is not the next step. It is a step. You have to improve the first team unless you want to be anxious, and to avoid the relegation every year. It is to do the right things in the academy, the training ground, and do the right things, signings in the first team. It is always the step.

“The question is what we can achieve? This club has to be in the top ten. How? We have to do a lot of things right and to start making the right decisions now.”

Does that mean that upgrading the facilities are more important than recruitment for Newcastle?

“I wouldn’t say high priority,” said Benitez. “When I was a player the main things were the training pitch. These are really good here.

“But if you want to keep the players happier you have to improve the facilities a bit. Swimming pool? Could be … you can improve the way you treat professionals because the other teams are doing that.

“It is something that can help, it’s not crucial but can help. The Academy, same, not crucial but can help. Fans like local players, and they care for the team. That is simple. It is to go and do the right things at the right time.”

Benitez’s own future remains unclear because of the ongoing discussions behind-the-scenes. He regularly referred to the fact he has a year remaining on his contract as a reason to expect him to be still at St James’ next season, although all he truly cares about his being able to do what he has done best for decades – improved.

He said: “My job as a coach was to improve anything around me and try to win. Be consistent. I didn’t realise when I came to England how good you can be as a manager.

“In Spain, three months as a coach, then you can be out. Noone is there in 22, or six or ten years. In England you can have the idea, keep improving and have a proper project, not a project for the press, but a proper one.

“At the same time, I have experience. You can have a lot of projects, but if the first team is not winning, then it's not working.

“Always I say, it's a train. It's a train and you have the engine and the carriages. You can put marketing, commercial, this, that, the Academy, but if you don't have power here [at the front of the train], the train doesn't go.

“You have to have power to go and after you can go faster or not, but you have to have power and then you can pull whatever you want.”

Newcastle will bring the curtain down on a relatively successful campaign against Chelsea tomorrow, when the Blues are looking for the results that will see them pip Liverpool to fourth spot.

Benitez, who cannot field Kenedy against his parent club, can only dream of such a scenario with Newcastle at this stage and all he really wants to do this weekend is prevent a fifth straight defeat to end the season.

He said: “It's something that as a manager, you say, 'Okay, now I am here, next year maybe you can be here or maybe you can be here', but the main thing is to make sure that you continue improving.

“I say sometimes I am still a young manager – my daughter doesn't think the same, she says, 'This old man without Snapchat or something', but still you are a young manager.

“You are training, so what I want is to improve players. I like to improve players and I like to improve the team and I like to improve the facilities.

“The other things around, in my experience, they can be wrong sometimes and for sure I will be wrong sometimes, but my experience gives me the possibility to say, 'Listen, that is the way' and I am really pleased with that.

“I am a professional. I was a teacher in the school and I was with kids, playing in the playground and trying to improve them, organising teams and competitions with all of them, and that is what I like to do.

“If you win with players that you have been coaching for years and improving for years, that is the best thing that you can feel as a coach.”