Newcastle's 'fight and 'belief' against Man City gives Rafa Benitez optimism for surivival

Rafa Benitez's Newcastle have picked up four points from their last two matches

Sergio Aguero’s 100th Premier League goal put Champions League semi-finalists City ahead early on but Vurnon Anita scored his first goal for more than two years to earn a deserved share of the spoils for the relegation-threatened Tynesiders.

Newcastle missed a chance to climb out of the bottom three and remain second-bottom, two points from safety going into their last four games.

"With this kind of fight, you have to be optimistic for the remaining games,” the Spaniard insisted after Newcastle ended a 12-game losing streak against the former Premier League champions.

Benitez has won one of his six games in charge and said: “It could have been an better result but it could have been worse. You’re playing against a Champions League semi-finalist and before the game I wanted three points, but after we went behind perhaps a draw isn’t too bad.

"We have more belief now, you could see that in the players and we will fight to the end. That’s two games in a row where we’ve had a great performance and had a great connection with the fans.

"I’ll tell the players not to look at the table too much and just concentrate on the next game. If concentrating on doing the numbers, you’re wasting time, we’ll keep going and see where we are going into the last game.”

Replays showed Aguero came back from an offside position to head his landmark goal inside the first 15 minutes and Benitez added: “We have to be pleased to come back from a goal down against a team like City.

"I’ve not seen replays of Aguero’s goal but they tell me it was offside. You can’t change it at this stage - they should get it right but we can’t change it now.”

Manchester City manager Manuel Pellegrini paid tribute to Aguero, who became the second fastest player after the watching Alan Shearer to reach a century of Premier League goals in just 147 appearances.

"I’m happy for him because it’s not easy to score that amount of goals in such a short space of time,” said Pellegrini. "Hopefully he can keep scoring like that for the rest of the season.”