Their second successive victory lifted the Magpies out of the Barclays Premier League relegation zone as they continued their revival under Kinnear, who is only on a temporary contract at St James' Park with Mike Ashley looking to sell the club.

Martins, however, revealed the players are happy with the stand-in boss and told Setanta Sports: "The gaffer is doing his best, for us just to try and push the pace in training.

"It helped us a lot today. We are happy he is here.

"The players have no problem with the gaffer and I hope he stays."

It was a vital victory for the Magpies and Martins continued: "We really needed this match, to put in 100% to win.

"I hope we continue like this.

"It is very important for strikers to be scoring goals and I'm very happy to score two goals.

"I have to thank my team-mates because we really tried."

Villa boss Martin O'Neill insisted he had not seen the incident when Joey Barton appeared to flick Gabriel Agbonlahor in the face which was not seen by referee Steve Bennett.

He told Setanta Sports: "I haven't seen the incident. But Gabby said something had happened. That's for other people."

O'Neill also bemoaned his side's inability to take their chances, adding: "We had great chances to win and we couldn't get our noses in front.

"When they scored it was the turning point. We played exceptionally well in the first half, we looked very dangerous.

"In the second we were far from being our very best - but we shouldn't have lost.

"I thought when Newcastle got the goal confidence came flooding back to the side and the last 20 minutes I thought they played exceptionally well."

The former Celtic boss denied the team were feeling fatigued with a UEFA Cup campaign running in tandem with their league programme.

"I thought we looked a bit tired at Blackburn," he continued.

"But this is what we wanted. There was no tiredness in the first half, we were exhilarating.

"I'm disappointed with the second half, we could have done better.

"We'll fight back, we have to. We are far from the finished article, we want to be battling, we want to be up there."