Benitez said: "The penalty was clear watching the television. The question is when you play against a big team the small details make the difference. This was a big detail and it was unbelievable that we didn't get it. Maybe we could have had another penalty as well but it wasn't given.
"We played a good game and for me we were better than Chelsea on the night. We know the difference between us and them is not that big. We showed people that we can beat them. We beat them last season and we can beat them again.
"We wanted to win the game and we tried to play with a high tempo and Crouch did well holding the ball up for us. There is a lot of positive things to take from this game for us."