Rafa Benitez has indicated that he hopes to take control of Newcastle United's transfers in the summer if he can avoid relegation, saying the club must "change a little bit."
Benitez will take charge of Newcastle for the first time on Monday when they travel to Premier League leaders Leicester, and a victory would lift the club out of the relegation zone.
The former Real Madrid has confirmed that he has a break clause in his contract that will allow him to depart if he fails to guide the club to safety, but should he stay on for next season he has told the club that there should be a change to the current approach, which has seen chief scout Graham Carr responsible for player recruitment.
Asked about Carr, Benitez told reporters: "I have not spoken to him, but I know him and have friends who know him. I don't see any problem.
"He is a football man -- we will talk about football, we will talk about players, and I think we will be fine. I understand why the club is going in this direction.
"I have to explain why we have to change a little bit, and I think that will be good for everyone."
Benitez said he had spoken most extensively with managing director Lee Charnley and added: "I was telling him my ideas and it was quite similar in a lot of ways.
"People can be worried about whether I am called the manager or if I have the final say in signings, but that is not a big issue.
"If I am here it is because they trust me and if I am here it is because they want to listen to me, they want to improve and want to do things in a certain way. For me that is positive."
The Times reports that Newcastle would be willing to support another summer of big spending if Benitez keeps the club in the top flight, having spent a reported £80 million over the course of Steve McClaren's tenure on players including Aleksandar Mitrovic, Georginio Wijnaldum, Florian Thauvin, Chancel Mbemba, Andros Townsend and Jonjo Shelvey.
Newcastle legend Alan Shearer, now a BBC pundit, has said that Benitez will be a "great coup" for the club "if -- and it's a big if -- he can manage the football club the way he wants to manage and "demand that he controls the transfers."
Benitez confirmed he had already had a brief chat with Shearer, saying: "He loves the club. He told me, 'If you do well it will be amazing.'
"He said, 'If you need me or want to know anything about the city, about the fans, about everything, you can always ask,' but we didn't have too much time to prepare for Leicester so I said, 'Listen, fantastic, we will have lunch any time.'
"He was great, he was really good, but it was just a chat."
More importantly, Benitez has held conversations with key players in the dressing room as he plots a revival in the club's final 10 games of the season.
"I have been talking with Shelvey, Fabricio Coloccini, a lot of players," he said. "I didn't have time to talk with everyone. I shake hands with everyone. We had some meetings together on Saturday morning, talking about tactics and all these things that we normally talk about. I have individual conversations, face to face with some players.
"Coloccini was one of them. On Saturday we had a tactical training session. We were doing some movements that I would like to do in the future and [Coloccini] was there, so he came outside to see what we were doing and I was talking with him.
"He was really confident that the team will do well because it's a good team."