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Rafa Benitez has vowed to continue with his rotation policy after the 1-0 loss to Blackburn Rovers.

The Spaniard pointed out after the defeat that it was the same selection process that had helped Newcastle United chalk up their recent 11-game unbeaten run and has taken them to the top of the Sky Bet Championship.

Newcastle will now look to recover from their defeat to Blackburn with an EFL Cup quarter-final against Hull City at the KC Stadium tomorrow night when Benitez is likely to alter his line-up once again.

When asked if he will stick with his policy, Benitez responded: “Yeah, we were successful making changes before, so we have to do it.

“I think we have a squad that’s been competing really well. On Saturday we had some injury problems with players like Jack Colback and others had to play.

“Christian Atsu, Aleksandar Mitrovic, Isaac Hayden, Chancel Mbemba and Ayoze Perez had to play.”

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After the game some fans debated whether Benitez had got it right or not against Rovers when leaving out players such as 13-goal top scorer Dwight Gayle.

Benitez said: “I think people will always say when something is wrong that it was the substitutions or the changes but we have had the same situation before when we were winning.

“For me there have been a lot of negatives with the way the game was going on and we didn’t manage properly.”

Newcastle created very little on the day against Blackburn but were denied a penalty when Mitrovic went down late in the second half.

Benitez - like the majority of the 50,092 crowd - was more frustrated by referee David Coote’s inability to let the game flow.

He said: “We can talk about was it a penalty or not?

“You have to be really disappointed because everything was wrong, starting with decisions but in the end it’s something you can’t control.

“I didn’t like our reaction when we were losing, and we have to do better.

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“I didn’t like the chances we didn’t take, and I didn’t like my decisions. But we cannot change things.

“We have to analyse what happened before the next game and make sure we don’t make the same mistakes.”

Meanwhile, Newcastle next opponents Hull scraped a nervy draw against West Bromwich Albion on Saturday with Mike Phelan keeping faith with some of his young players.

After the 1-1 draw he said: “Overall, we’ve taken a point and it’s something we want to build on.

“I showed a little bit of belief in the players by selecting the same side as last week and I wanted the players to respond to that.

“We had 45 minutes when we tried to be composed and not give anything away and then in the second half we came out of the traps better and without being gung-ho, we were on the front foot.

“Sometimes you can be cautious and it works, sometimes you can be cautious and it doesn’t work but credit to the players because they definitely stuck at it and they had a bit of belief to come from behind again.”

Victory for United at Hull will see them book their first domestic cup semi-final since 2005.