HAVING The right mentality, says Rafael Benitez, was crucial to Newcastle United’s win at Rotherham United.

His team were 1-0 victors, following the 4-3 win over Norwich City three days earlier and ensuring there was no repeat of the QPR defeat last month.

Having raised morale by beating QPR 6-0 three weeks ago, the Magpies then lost 2-0 to Wolves. But Benitez’s side were dogged and determined at the New York Stadium, grinding out a hard-fought win over the Championship’s bottom club.

“It’s vital to have the right mentality,” explained the boss, who gave Ghanaian Chrisitian Atsu his full debut and saw him score the only goal.

“After these kind of games (4-3 against Norwich), when we’ve come from behind in the final moments, and everybody is so happy, talking too much about how the team is doing this, it’s important to tell the players: ‘Look, we have had this problem before, so we have to stay concentrated and focused.’ “We did it against Rotherham, a good team who were pushing and pressing, particularly in the first 20 minutes, when they made it difficult.

“Then we started reacting better and improved and got the win.”

Although now without a win in seven matches, Rotherham ran Newcastle close, twice hitting the post, and Benitez admitted it was a day to focus on the points rather than the performance.

He said: “We can try to play nice football but sometimes it’s not enough, so you have to work hard.

“If you have quality you will win.

“Today the game-plan was to work hard and do our best in terms of physicality and the tempo of the game.

“We won three points and we did what we had to do. The name of the opposition does not matter, you still have to try to win.

“The other day, against Norwich, we went behind before we won.

“Today was just as difficult as Norwich, they were pushing and pushing.

“We have to work and organise the team and make sure we are doing the right things every single time because if you make one mistake you could pay for that.

“To win against Norwich and to perform at this level and win is massive for the confidence of the team.”

“This league is very difficult – and we know that. But we also know that we have quality in this squad.

Atsu’s winner was a beauty, the winger cutting inside from the right before curling left-footed past keeper Lee Camp to fully justify Benitez’s selection of the on-loan Chelsea ace.

“Christian scored similar goals in the training sessions, so to see him score this goal in an official game is really pleasing,” said the manager.

“I’m really pleased for him, because it means he’s worked really hard, and you have this kind of situation which pleased me even more.

“He has been training really well, he has pace and mobility, and we felt that by moving the ball to wide areas he could go one-v-one against defenders.

“We did a lot of research on him before we brought him here and my information from Spain was really positive, really good.

“When I spoke to people at Chelsea they were telling me that he’s a nice lad and from what I have seen he is a good professional, working hard every day.”