Burn's pre-City message: This is the best team I’ve played in for resilience & character | OneFootball

We’ve always had this mantra of ‘us against the world’ and we’re fighting everyone and we really felt like we had that on Wednesday.

A weekday night at St. James’ Park, against Manchester United, we knew that the crowd would be fired up. We fed off that, and that’s when we’re at our best. It was the Newcastle we’ve come to know over the last four years or so. I’m really happy we got to that – we’ve made a lot of the schedule but it’s not for a lack of effort that we’re in the position we’re in.

I speak about it all the time, this is the best team I’ve played in for resilience and character and everyone looking after each other. We deserved the win, we’ve been a little bit unlucky in weeks gone by and not got the results that we wanted. We really wanted to put on a performance and I think we deserved it.

The gaffer spoke at half-time and said this could be one of the best nights of his tenure here. We wanted to do that for him and for each other, we did that.

I’m really buzzing for Will [Osula] as well. He puts in the work every day and probably wants more minutes. If he keeps doing what he did this week, it’s inevitable that he will.

It shows how important our whole squad is. We’ve recruited in the summer, brought in lads who haven’t had the chance to train and do the things that the previous set of lads all got to do, with all the games we’ve had. So it’s hard for them but you see the quality they’ve got. Everyone to a man was quality tonight – I’m really happy for Rambo [Aaron Ramsdale]. He deserved that because we’ve not always played well when he’s come in. I’m happy for him, Joey [Joelinton] was a man mountain as always so I’m really happy for a lot of the lads.

Now we take this momentum into the FA Cup. We’ve beaten Manchester City here already this season. The last time at the Etihad stadium it was a really good performance and the best we’ve played against them there. These are the games you dream about when you’re a kid, playing against the top teams. We just seem to have them all in a short space!

It’s exciting, we’re full of confidence and ready to go again.

With the calibre of the teams that we’re playing in this run, it’s nice that we go into these games feeling like we can win them. We’re not just going to turn up and have a nice time – we’ve got full belief that we can progress in the FA Cup, get through in the Champions League and pick up points in the Premier League going into the international break.

We know that the cups are our best chance of silverware currently. We didn’t quite get there with the Carabao Cup so the FA Cup is the next chance. If you want to win these cups, you’ve got to beat the best and there’s not many better at the minute than Manchester City. It’s going to be a tough ask but we’re full of confidence.

I want to give a final word to the incredible support you gave us on Wednesday. From the start we felt like you had the energy to go. Nighttime games are always like that so hopefully it’s going to be the same tonight.

We’re going to need it, we’ve got a lot of games in a hectic schedule and we need the crowd to pull with us.