Ayoze Perez hails victory which leaves Newcastle ‘really close to survival’

Ayoze Perez insists Newcastle’s fight against relegation from the Premier League is not over yet despite firing them to a priceless victory over Huddersfield.

The Spaniard’s 80th-minute strike secured a 1-0 win over Huddersfield at St James’ Park on Saturday which lifted the Magpies up to 12th place.

Manager Rafael Benitez was quick to remind his players afterwards that a third successive home win had not completed the job, and the message had clearly got through.

Perez said: “I’m really pleased to score the winning goal in an important game. We knew winning this game would mean we were going to be really close to survival.

“That’s our position at the minute, so it’s a big three points and we are doing really well.

“The team looks compact and is working in the same way every week. That’s important now because we need those points.”

Promoted Newcastle have hit form just when they needed to – they have lost just three of their last 13 league games, two to Manchester City and the other to Liverpool – and have secured 12 of the last 21 points available to them.

Perez said: “We are the team that is getting those wins at the moment. As you can imagine, everybody in the dressing room is really happy after that. It’s amazing for us at the moment.”

The Magpies’ latest win was hard-fought as they squandered first-half chances through Dwight Gayle and Matt Ritchie before finally making the pressure tell.

Even then, they needed a lenient interpretation of Kenedy’s challenge on Elias Kachunga and survived late chances for Mathias Jorgensen and substitute Scott Malone to edge their way to victory.

The decisive moment arrived 10 minutes from time when Kenedy controlled substitute Christian Atsu’s cross after keeper Jonas Lossl had failed to cut it out and unselfishly squared for Perez to slide home.

Huddersfield boss David Wagner saw his side fail to score for the ninth time in their last 12 league outings, but insisted he was not unduly worried by that statistic.

Wagner said: “If we didn’t have opportunities, I would have much bigger concerns.

“We can read out stats and we are not the team which has scored the most goals in this competition, this is the truth.

“But as I said, especially in the last games, we have created and had a lot of opportunities which we unfortunately haven’t used.

“But I’m long enough in this business that I know in one game, everything can change and you score two, three, four in one game.

“As long as we have the chances which we’re having at the minute, you have to continue with what you are doing and use the chances.”