Some big things have come to light over the past couple of days: Newcastle legends working for the club will toe the line, PR companies can con the media into publishing the right things, and Mike Williamson really, really needs to learn the meaning of the word "fantastic." Speaking after the Swansea game, the former Watford man said the team were going into the break on a positive (18th position from 19th position being the tiny "up" he was presumably referring to) and threw his frame behind Pardew. He is the right man for the job, he is a great manager, there are good times ahead: all difficult to take for supporters looking in on the club, because none of those things are being translated into performances and results and the justification for them seems baffling. But then, this is Mike Williamson we are talking about; a low level Premier League player who is the same first choice centre-half we had in the Championship in 2010. Under any other manager, who is to say he would even be playing currently? Who's to say that another manager wouldn't have given up on Fabricio Coloccini, or would have told the recruitment team in the summer categorically to go and get a new centre-half immediately? The defender has been a solid member of Newcastle's squad for the past few years - solid but never spectacular - and you have to suspect that if Newcastle invested in a new centre-half, it would be the Englishman who moved aside to accommodate them in the first-team. So of course he's going to back his manager to the hilt. Of course he's going to tell the man who has control over his fate as a professional footballer fantastic, and we should perhaps forgive him for all of that.
