HE might have been the unlikeliest of Newcastle United match winners, but perhaps it was only appropriate that Gabriel Obertan was the player to ease some of the mounting pressure on manager Alan Pardew at the weekend.

While Pardew has become increasingly peripheral in terms of Newcastle’s transfer policy in recent years, there was a time when he was the driving force behind the club’s recruitment policy and Obertan’s £3m move from Manchester United was one of the deals he was keenest to push through. It has taken more than three years, but finally the decision has paid dividends.

Those three years have featured frustrations aplenty, and Obertan would not even have been a Newcastle player at the weekend had his wages, a throwback to his time at Old Trafford, not put off a number of overseas suitors this summer.

For much of last season, the 25-year-old winger was even more of an outcast than his compatriots Hatem Ben Arfa, Sylvain Marveaux and Mapou Yanga-Mbiwa, but while his fellow Frenchmen all left Tyneside before the start of the season, Obertan has been the Magpies’ great survivor.

As unsellable as he was perceived to be unselectable, the final two years of his Newcastle career looked like being spent in the shadows. A brief training-ground appearance here, an outing for the reserves there, although if last season was anything to go by, there wasn’t even a guarantee he would make the development team.

He was a substitute for the opening four Premier League games of the season, and for the next one, against Hull City, he didn’t even make the matchday 18. Yet here we are little more than a month later, and he is being touted as the potential saviour of Newcastle’s misfiring midfield.

Apart from the injured Rolando Aarons, he is the only midfielder to have scored this season, and he will retain his place ahead of £7m summer signing Remy Cabella when Pardew takes his side to Tottenham at the weekend.

“I have always been confident in myself and my ability,” said Obertan. “So while it might be a surprise for some people, it is not for me. I have been grinding away quite a while for this and it’s just a great feeling at the moment.

The Northern Echo:

“I just kept on working hard. I know the most important thing is working when people don’t see you. It’s easy to train when you have the coaches patting you on the back, but these moments when you are by yourself are the moments when you really have to work hard and dig deep.”

Even so, is Obertan’s sudden spell in the limelight a reflection of his refusal to give up when his first-team chances were all but non-existent, or more of a confirmation of the failings of those who were ahead of him at the start of the campaign?

In truth, it is probably a bit of both. Obertan’s recent performances, most notably at Crystal Palace in the Capital One Cup and as a substitute in the league defeat at Stoke, merited his recall to the starting line-up, but he would surely have been nowhere near the first team had Siem de Jong not been injured and Cabella not been such a disappointment in the early days of his Newcastle career.

A Magpies midfield that looked like containing a decent smattering of creative options at the start of the season has underperformed repeatedly, and aside from Obertan it is hard to think of too many directions in which Pardew could turn. When your only real competition comes from Sammy Ameobi, maybe it becomes somewhat easier to get a second chance.

Nevertheless, it would be churlish to completely dismiss the Frenchman’s qualities, even though so many of his previous Newcastle performances were fatally undermined by a lack of end product.

Obertan has always boasted raw ability, hence Sir Alex Ferguson’s willingness to shell out £3m to sign him from Bordeaux, but in the past, his speed and direct running have masked a failure to pick out the right pass or deliver a telling cross. Think “run Forrest run”, and you wouldn’t be too far off.

There has still been an element of that in recent games, but in a Newcastle side in which too many passes go sideways and far too few midfielders are willing to take on their opponent, an element of directness is to be commended, even if it doesn’t always turn out as planned.

Perhaps, after eight years as a professional, Obertan is realising that too much haste can be counterproductive, and the poise that enabled him to cut inside and break the deadlock against Leicester augurs well. Similarly, his general work-rate on Saturday hinted at a growing maturity and awareness of his responsibilities to the rest of the team.

“Gabby is a player you would pick out every day on the training ground,” said Pardew. “It is about transferring that to a match-day and, when he does, like he has recently, he can be a real force. He is getting older now, and getting to a point where he has to deliver week in, week out.”

These are still early days, and with games against Tottenham, Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal to come before the middle of December, the challenges facing Obertan are about to become considerably more difficult. And that’s assuming he retains his place in the team.

Still, after being the forgotten man for so long, it would be churlish to deny the winger his spell in the limelight. Newcastle, and Pardew in particular, must hope it is not a fleeting improvement.