Rafael Benitez has admitted that he needs to brush up on his French in order to get his message across clearly among the majority of the Newcastle United players.

Newcastle possess a large number of French speaking players in their squad and with some of them not having a good grasp of the English language, manager Benitez has revealed that he struggles to get his points across properly.

Benitez, who is fluent in Spanish, English and Italian, has now stated that he will need to recall of his previously-learnt French in order to avoid havng his message lost in translation.

The Spaniard said: "I need to practise my French. I learnt in school and I was quite good but so many years I was talking in English or Italian, and Spanish.

"I talked to (Chancel) Mbemba earlier in French, sometimes I try to talk to him and I was trying to remember my French.

"It's quite difficult to do the job because you need to communicate (in different languages). There are things you have to tell the players. You can do different things - you can use the video but you have to say something.

"At half-time you have to explain things, little details very clearly, and can I do it in French? No, it has to be in English but some of them cannot understand English so how do you explain little things so they will understand?"