Rafa – we can still turn things around

RAFA Benitez is confident that Newcastle United will turn the corner soon with games against West Ham and Brighton still to come this month.

Saturday’s game with the Hammers at the London Stadium is now shaping up to be one of the crucial encounters of the season with the need for points even more crucial with red hot Manchester City at St James’ Park on December 27. The Toon chief watched on at the Emirates Stadium as his side’s losing streak continued, but was encouraged by the way they put up a fight in the capital against Arsenal.

Newcastle stayed in the game throughout and threatened to score a later equaliser with Jacob Murphy forcing a save out of Petr Cech and Ayoze Perez missing two key chances. After the game, Benitez said: “The difference between teams around the table is not too big. If we continue playing like this, we will have a couple of games where we get better results and that will give us more confidence.

“It will be easier for us to continue with the same attitude and message, and trying to win more games.”

Newcastle were in fourth place in the Premier League at one stage this season, but have since slipped into the bottom three.

Benitez reflected: “Our situation is that we did so well for a while that everybody was expecting that we could be in the top 10, but we knew that this team, coming back from the Championship last year and doing the things that we did in the summer, had to be near the bottom of the table. Obviously, the last results have not given us too much confidence, and we had two or three injuries when maybe we could have done better against teams that are closer to us.

“We didn’t do that because we couldn’t.”