Cut mistakes for success, says Benitez
that as a manager you are always looking for.”
Newcastle now have odds of 9/1 with Unibet for a top-half finish to the season - but Benitez is trying not to get carried away.
He added: “I know my staff and from a long, long time ago we have always finished stronger at the end of the season.
“Sometimes you can lose some games but we finish stronger and I had confidence we could do it.
“If you remember last year, we were safe with five games to play and after,wards we lost four games and we won the last one but we were already safe.
“It was something I was expecting and hopefully we can carry on winning games.
“If we are safe soon we can manage games in another way and try to be even better if we can.” NEWCASTLE United manager Rafa Benitez believes making fewer mistakes than opponents is the “key” to success in football.
The Spaniard added that keeping calm in the moment is also another key element to achieving the end goals in the game, even with all the technology to analyse the fixtures inside out.
Speaking to BT Sport, the United manager spoke about his methods on the touch line, the potential of breaking into the top 10, and new boy Miguel Almiron.
On the key to success, he said: “Each club has it’s own pressure, and it’s very similar but if you don’t think too much about that, if you don’t carry on with the thinking ‘we have to win this one’. “You just have to stay calm and be sure you don’t make too many mistakes. Maybe you make mistakes but you have to make less than others and that is the key if you want to be successful.”
On Miguel Almiron, Rafa said: “He’s a good lad, he’s a good professional. We were looking for someone with more pace, more mobility and he can do that.
“We have a lot of players who talk Spanish, and he can understand and talk English so I think that is quite good.
“He is a nice lad, he is a worker and he is OK with the rest of the teammates.”
On finishing 10th, the fans, and the warm weather camp, the manager said: “To have the fans behind you, especially when you have 52,000 at home, and three, four, five thousand when we go away, the players appreciate that, and obviously me as a manager the same.
“When you talk about top sides, sometimes we talk about massive cities and a lot of fans – Newcastle United is like that. You have to give credit to our players because to finish in this position (10th) in a competitive league like the Premier League. Hopefully [this year] we can have the same result.
“Every season is different but we were fine after that [last year’s training camp] because everyone was together, playing games, so I think they know each other a little better so hopefully it will be the same.”