Newcastle players can prove doubters wrong, insists Ayoze Perez

Negative headlines seem to have followed the Magpies around over the course of the summer, with a lack of significant transfer activity and question marks over manager Rafa Benitez's future at the forefront of the fans mind.

A difficult start to the campaign in which United lost their opening two top flight games to Tottenham Hotspur, Huddersfield Town and were dumped out of the League Cup on home turf by Nottingham Forest, as well as bans for Jonjo Shelvey and Aleksandar Mitrovic have intensified that somewhat.

And that's without even getting into the Sky Sports Mike Ashley interview.

That has led many, including a host of high profile pundits, to write United off this season. Before the international break Benitez's men were cast off as relegation fodder.

Perez, though, thinks all this negativity has made people lose sight of the quality in the current squad.

And he believes that game-by-game those in the United ranks will go about proving these so-called experts wrong.

"When the window is open you have to deal with those rumours. But we know the team we have and how strong we can be," said Perez, after the 1-0 win at Swansea City.

"This dressing room is ambitious, we want to win games and that's going to be important this season.

"We have got two wins in a row and the most important thing is that we are working on what we have to do.

"We have to get the right mentality because we know the season is long and tough.'

"We had to be in the Championship and it was a tough year.

"Nobody feels good when you get relegated, but we have been working very hard to be in this league.

"We want to show that we should be playing in this league and these wins will give us some confidence."