While Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester United all face the prospect of losing their top names this summer, Benitez is delighted to report he will survive a summer without any major departures.

Said Rafa: "The players who played the majority of the games last season, the big names, the important players are still with us and that's important," he explained. "It can give us an advantage. For us, keeping our key players and bringing in others with passion and hunger is important.

"You have to be realistic. Every year you need to change players. For example, Crouch wanted to play and you need to accept his situation, understand it and move on. But you want to keep the players who are your key components. That gives us stability and a base to work from, and then, hopefully, the new players can give us the things we were looking for."

Benitez added: "When you talk about these players like Ronaldo, Adebayor, Lampard, they are very good players and their prices will be high.

"If they leave, the clubs will have more money and could bring in better players. But we will have all our big names still in place, and that could be more important. They will have confidence, too.

"When you have players winning trophies, that's important for their mentality.

Sometimes you can see a good player who isn't winning trophies, and you have doubts about his mentality.

"But the Spanish players have shown they have it by winning a trophy, and we have others here who have shown it as well."