Benitez was pleased to see his team get back to winning ways in the league with yesterday's 2-0 win over Everton at Goodison.
"This was a really important victory for us," said the boss.
"We won in Debrecen in midweek and we knew that we needed to keep winning. A derby is always a very difficult game and also very important, so to win today could be a boost for the rest of the season.
"We are higher in the table now and everybody is happy. We will see if we can now keep winning games.
"It was clearly a very difficult game. From the beginning they were playing a very direct game and also dangerous from set pieces. It was very difficult to control and stop them because they are big and good in the air, so I thought we showed character.
"We were trying to play counter-attack and sometimes our possession was good, and other times it wasn't so good. They were on top of us but we showed character, we won and scored two goals, and at the end of the game we had better control."
