HE spent the summer “fighting” for as much transfer activity as possible, but Rafael Benitez admits it is now time to forget about the players who did not arrive at Newcastle United and focus on the squad that have climbed into the top half of the Premier League table.

Benitez will return to the dug-out when Newcastle host Stoke City this afternoon, having completed his recovery from the illness that forced him to miss last weekend’s win at Swansea, and the Magpies manager made his first public appearance since the end of the transfer window when he conducted his pre-match press conference yesterday.

Newcastle failed to make a single deadline-day signing despite Benitez’s insistence that his squad was short in key areas, and the lack of spending resulted in renewed speculation over the manager’s future amid ongoing interest from West Ham.

Benitez remains unhappy at the failure to sign a goalkeeper, left-back or forward in the final days of the window, but is adamant it is now time to move on. He now knows who he has to work with until at least the start of January, and is determined to do all he can to extract the maximum from the players at his disposal.

“I am very pragmatic,” said the Newcastle manager, who was forced to watch last weekend’s win from his family home on the Wirral as he completed his recovery from an operation to cure an infection that followed hernia surgery. “There’s a time to fight and I was fighting to improve my team in the way I think we have to improve. Now, it is a time to help my team and improve my players.

“I must improve every single player. I’ve had a couple of conversations with them this week – players who were out of the group before, who were 'out of favour', but now are here - and I said, ‘Look, I was clear before for these reasons. And it’s clear now that I will try to improve you to be sure that if you can play, you will play. You have to be sure that if you work hard, then you will have your chances’.

“The message is very clear - before I wanted to improve and I wanted to do things in what I thought was the right way, now it's just to be sure that this group of players, they will be better.”

Dwight Gayle is one of the key players who were previously out of favour, but who now find themselves playing an integral role in the first-team group once more.

Gayle would have joined Fulham on deadline-day had Newcastle been able to secure an attacking replacement, but moves for Divock Origi and Lucas Perez failed to come to fruition.

As a result, last season’s leading goalscorer finds himself still on the Magpies’ books, and while he is likely to be on the substitutes’ bench this afternoon with Benitez set to keep faith with Joselu, who will be facing his former club, Gayle could still have an important role to play in the remainder of the season.

“Those players who were out of the squad in my head in the transfer window, now they are in the squad and I will try to improve them,” said Benitez. “I haven’t really had to talk with Dwight because he knew that as soon as we were finished (in the window), he was happy to stay and fight for his position.”

The slate has been wiped clean when it comes to Gayle, but the same is not true of Jack Colback, who will continue to train with Newcastle’s Under-23s.

Colback turned down a deadline-day move to Wolves in order to remain in the North-East, but had been warned that he did not have a first-team future on Tyneside. Benitez sees no reason to change his stance on the issue, even though Colback continues to earn around £70,000-a-week.

“Jack knew my ideas before, and he knows my ideas now,” said the Newcastle boss. “It’s important for me to have a group of players, and the number of players, you can manage.

“Sometimes you have too many players and you have to leave some out. But to have players training on their own, I don't think that's a good situation. Instead you have to be training with a team (the Under-23s).”

Chancel Mbemba is back in the squad for today’s game after recovering from injury, and will hope to replace Jesus Gamez from the side that won at the Liberty Stadium. Massadio Haidara and Paul Dummett are the only injury absentees, as Newcastle look to record three successive Premier League victories for the first time in three years.

“At the moment, I am quite positive,” said Benitez. “We have won two games, and the way that won them was by doing what we expected to be doing. But can we improve the way we do it? Yes we can. That’s why I’m positive.

“Will doing that be easy? No chance. If you think now we’re going to win ten games in a row, it is not going to be like this. But we have to make sure that every single player is working hard and trying to improve, even if they’re not playing. If they do that, the team will be better.”