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Newcastle manager Rafa Benitez vows 'I will not quit' amid exit rumours

Rafael Benitez has urged Newcastle not to repeat the mistakes of the past after insisting he is not about to walk out of St James' Park.

Magpies fans woke on Friday morning to headlines suggesting the Spaniard could quit as manager at the end of the season after a disappointing January transfer window during which top target Andros Townsend -- or indeed anyone else -- failed to arrive at St James' Park to boost the club's promotion push.

Benitez, who will send his side out against promotion rivals Derby on Saturday, promised that he is not about to depart, but called for a united front as he attempts to secure an immediate return to the Premier League.

He said: "I will not quit, I will not leave because I am happy or I am not happy. I am ready to fight and try to get three points in the next game and to be promoted at the end of the season, that's it.

"It is so simple, so clear and because I have a compromise, especially with the fans, who have from the very beginning been pushing and helping me to enjoy my job.

"I am just trying to be sure that the players, the staff, everyone is pushing in the same direction, so we need our fans.

"The experience with this club has been sometimes quite complicated for the fans, the owner, the players, the staff, whatever, and we cannot afford to make the same mistakes, so we have to be sure that we push, everyone, in the same direction and every game, everybody available, everybody giving 100 percent and that's it.

"At the end of the season, I expect we will be promoted, so we will enjoy it and we will be happy, but we cannot be blaming each other now after the transfer window."

However, Benitez declined to give assurances about his long-term future.

"I was not talking about, 'If, if, if', and I will not be saying, 'Oh, in the future,'" he said. "My future now is the next game and trying to get promoted. And then every week things could change because if we win, it will be easier. Lose and it will be more difficult. So it makes no sense for me to talk about what happens in the future.

"What I want to say is that I am concentrating and focused and I want to win every single game I can until the end of the season.

"We will have plenty of time to talk about what is going on and how to do things or whatever, but I am not worrying about that and the fans have to understand this. The priority is to get the results we need to get promotion."

Benitez was clearly frustrated not to have landed the players for which he had asked, and by an apparent change in the club's transfer policy last month when his full control of the club's football operations seemed to have been eroded with owner Mike Ashley having placed a hand on the tiller.

He said: "I said before we were expecting something could happen. It didn't happen, but now still I have confidence in this team because we did so well in the first part of the season.

"You try to adjust things when you have injuries or you have some problems, but we couldn't do it and now, it's just don't make the same mistake that this club has done in the past.

"I am not talking about the club making mistakes, I am talking about the club, the fans, the staff, everyone, the city. We have to realise that if we want to be stronger, we have to stick together.

"When the fans are behind the team, we are stronger. We can criticise players, we can criticise the owner, we can criticise the staff or the manager, but it doesn't change anything."

Benitez will not dwell on the matter in the short term having seen it all before, but he has called for a united front to avoid a return to the days during the not too distant past when Ashley and the fans were at war.

He said: "What you have to do now is concentrate on what you can change -- your team selection, your fitness. The other things, we have plenty of time to analyse and see what will happen.

"At the moment, we need the fans behind the team and the players focused. After, we will see. If in three weeks' time we have won four games, the sky will be blue again."

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