Newcastle United boss Rafael Benitez has backed his side to build on their 4-1 victory against Reading on Wednesday evening.

The Magpies had lost their opening two Championship fixtures before Isaac Hayden, Matt Ritchie and a double from Dwight Gayle secured the North-East outfit a welcome win at St James' Park.

The Spaniard is quoted by Sky Sports News as saying: "We will get much better. How much is difficult to quantify, but I'm sure that we will improve. There will be some bad games, for sure, but we will improve.

"I didn't want to say the other day after losing two games there were 44 games to play, now 43, but it's the reality. The reality is you don't have too much time to prepare the team during the week, so you have to do things at the same time that you are trying to win games, and that's more difficult.

"But it's like this and hopefully these three points will give us a little bit of confidence for the next games."

Newcastle are next in action when they travel to Bristol City on Saturday afternoon.