FOR the vast majority of people associated with Newcastle United, Sunday’s 1-1 draw with Wolves will be instantly forgettable. A humdrum game with precious little in the way of excitement delivered by either team.

For Federico Fernandez, however, the afternoon could prove a key turning point in his Magpies career. Given a chance to prove himself after two months of kicking his heels under Steve Bruce, the Argentinian seized his opportunity. On a day when the shares were spoiled, Fernandez emerged as a rare winner.

“The last two months have been quite difficult,” said the 30-year-old, whose only previous start under Bruce had come in the Carabao Cup defeat to Leicester City. “As a player, you want to be involved in the team.

“In the first three or four games, I was outside (the squad), so I tried to keep working and training hard. You never know when the possibility comes. I think I had a decent game personally, so now I need to push on and be in the team.”

Fernandez made 17 Premier League starts last season, often appearing as part of Rafael Benitez’s preferred five-man defensive line-up.

This term, he has found himself behind Jamaal Lascelles, Fabian Schar, Ciaran Clark and Paul Dummett in the pecking order, but a combination of injury, with Schar nursing a knee problem, and loss of form, with Dummett having fallen out of favour, have resulted in his return to the starting side.

He impressed at both ends on Sunday, defending resolutely to neuter the dangerous Raul Jimenez and Diego Jota, and surging upfield to deliver the pinpoint cross that enabled Lascelles to open the scoring towards the end of the first half.

Bruce’s defensive options are about to bolstered by the return of Florian Lejeune – the Spaniard made his first outing since knee-ligament surgery for Newcastle’s Under-23s last night – but it would be harsh to drop Fernandez for this weekend’s trip to West Ham United. Perform well there, and his resurrection under Bruce would just about be complete.

With Lejeune and Schar still to come back into the reckoning, defence is unquestionably the strongest area of Newcastle’s current squad. Since switching formation in the wake of last month’s debacle at Leicester, the Magpies have conceded just two goals in matches against Manchester United, Chelsea and Wolves.

They have successfully rediscovered the kind of defensive resilience that was their forte under Benitez last season, but tightening things up at the back has come at a cost. At the other end of the field, Newcastle are proving utterly ineffective, with their tally of six goals from their opening ten league games equalling their worst ever start to a season in terms of goals scored.

“We’ve played some good football, and you saw that in the first half (against Wolves),” countered Fernandez. “Every week, we try to build. We’re trying to put everything into the game to win.

“It was disappointing not to get the win, but I think the first half was good in terms of keeping the ball and how many chances we created. The second half was totally different.

“We didn’t keep the ball and go forward, that’s why we were disappointed.

“It’s difficult to go forward with one less man (after Sean Longstaff’s dismissal), but we needed to do better at the start of the second half. We were winning 1-0 in front of our fans, so we needed to show a little bit more.”

And if Newcastle need some attacking inspiration at the London Stadium, on Saturday they can always call on their goal-getting centre-halves.

“I was thinking, ‘I need to cross’, and it was a decent cross,” said Fernandez. “I found Jamaal, and he scored a decent goal.”