RAFAEL BENITEZ has thrown down the gauntlet to promotion rivals Huddersfield Town, and challenged the Championship’s surprise packages to prove they have the mettle to go the distance in the race for the Premier League.

Newcastle United travel to Huddersfield’s John Smith’s Stadium this evening looking to extend the eight-point gap that currently separates them from the Terriers, who occupy the first of the play-off positions.

Whereas Newcastle started the season as favourites to claim the Championship title, David Wagner’s side were available at 100-1 before a ball was kicked, but a run of 13 wins from their last 16 league matches has thrust them back into the heart of the promotion mix.

With a game in hand on both Newcastle and Brighton, a win this evening would strengthen Huddersfield’s position further, but Benitez has cranked up the pressure ahead of tonight’s trip to West Yorkshire by highlighting the increased pressure on his side’s opponents.

Whereas Huddersfield have had nothing to lose for the vast majority of the season, they suddenly find themselves fighting to save their promotion hopes, and while his own players are used to dealing with sky-high expectations, Benitez is interested to see how Wagner’s team cope with their new-found status as potential gate-crashers of the top two.

“Now, they will start feeling the pressure, because it’s not the same,” said the Newcastle boss. “When you are in the middle of the table, you can play nice football and everything is positive, but when you’re playing for something, you have a lot more pressure.

“At the beginning of the season, everybody was talking about Aston Villa, Norwich, Newcastle United, Brighton, Sheffield Wednesday - all of these teams. Reading and Huddersfield? Nobody was talking about them.

“They were doing well and now they are in a very good position, but that’s when you have to realise that every draw is a problem, every chance you miss is a problem – that’s when you feel the pressure. Let’s see what happens with them in the next 12 or 13 games.”

As he approaches the final two months of the season, Benitez can call on a host of players with experience of either playing in the Premier League or winning promotion from the Championship. The likes of Ciaran Clark, DeAndre Yedlin, Jonjo Shelvey, Christian Atsu and Aleksandar Mitrovic are full internationals, while Matt Ritchie won a Championship title with Bournemouth and Daryl Murphy boasts a winners’ medal from his time with Sunderland.

Huddersfield’s squad is much more inexperienced, and while the likes of Elias Kachunga and Nakhi Wells have been in fine form so far this season, it will be interesting to see how they react when the pressure begins to increase.

Similarly, while Wagner, who will be serving the second match of a two-game touchline ban today, is in his first managerial position, having previously worked under Jurgen Klopp at Borussia Dortmund, Benitez has been operating at the highest level of European football for more than a decade-and-a-half.

As a result, whatever happens in the next eight weeks, there is a fair chance the Newcastle manager will have seen and overcome it before.

“I’m used to being under pressure,” said Benitez. “At Inter Milan you're expected to win; you go to Liverpool and then everybody was expecting Liverpool to be there even when you knew that you didn’t have the budget, but people said you had to be there because of the history.

“You go to Napoli and everybody says, ‘Oh, (Diego) Maradona was there, you have to win’. Then obviously at Real Madrid there is expectation too.

“But it’s not just you as a manager who has to deal with it – it’s the whole club. The staff, the players, even the city, they have to realise that you can achieve what you want to achieve, but only if you stay calm.

“Don’t put yourself under any more pressure than you need to by panicking, because I can tell you that at Inter or Napoli or Real Madrid, every game is pressure, pressure. If you stay calm, then you can perform better.”

Newcastle’s patience was rewarded on Tuesday as two goals inside the final ten minutes secured a dramatic 2-1 win at Brighton. It was the third time in the last four games that the Magpies had come from behind to claim at least a point, and having struggled to respond to adversity earlier in the season, Benitez feels his players’ resilience is starting to come to the fore.

“Norwich was a good example, where we had to react and do well in the second half,” he said. “Then at half-time of the Bristol City game, the message was, ‘Have confidence in ourselves, we are doing well’.

“You should carry on trying to do the right things, don’t play with anxiety. It is still something we need to manage better, but we are reacting well in more games now than we were before.”

Dwight Gayle is back in the squad for this evening’s game, although the striker is likely to be restricted to the substitutes’ bench as Benitez guards against yet another recurrence of his hamstring troubles.

“He’s fine,” he said. “He could (start), but he’s had some days without training. He was training with the team the last three days though, so we will see. His reaction the other day was fine, and you could see he was quite sharp.”