Rafa Benitez revealed that he was very happy with the commitment his Newcastle players showed today as they beat Cardiff City 3-0 at St James’ Park.
Two goals from Fabian Schar and a third by Ayoze Perez gave The Magpies a huge victory over relegation-rivals Cardiff and moved Newcastle out of the bottom three.
Benitez was impressed by the desire his players showed despite having gone through a gruelling 120-minute FA Cup replay at Blackburn during the week.
“It was good. We won the other day and scored four in the FA Cup, coming back here after three days, we went to extra time and you could see the players were exhausted at the end.’’ Benitez told BBC’s MOTD.
“We did good. We scored three goals so everyone has to be happy.
“The main thing is the commitment of the players and then it was about trying to manage the game against a tough team, a physical team.”
The former Liverpool and Chelsea manager was very happy with Schar’s performance and enjoyed the Swiss international’s first goal, in particular.
“Fabian Schar has quality on the ball. It [his first goal] was a great goal. The team were giving everything and this kind of game you know you have to work hard,” said Benitez.
“I said before we would still have to win a lot of games to stay up.”