Match-winner Hatem Ben Arfa admits he would have lost sleep had he not blasted Newcastle to a dramatic first Barclays Premier League victory of the season over Fulham.
The Frenchman's superb late intervention ensured the Magpies went into the break for international matches having ended a three-game wait for a three-point haul.
With the future of fellow midfielder Yohan Cabaye still uncertain and director of football Joe Kinnear's search for the new blood manager Alan Pardew desperately wants showing few signs of bearing fruit, not all the questions hanging over the club before kick-off have been answered.
But as the black and white faithful strapped themselves in for what could prove to a be a turbulent 48 hours, they were able to do so in the knowledge that they can still win matches and have genuine talent at their disposal.
Ben Arfa said: "If it had finished 0-0, I don't think we would have slept because we would have been very, very frustrated.
"But I think everyone in Newcastle is very happy because everyone was waiting for the first win. We won and I was very happy for that.
"I believed. We didn't have doubts because if you have doubts, your mood is down and you don't do things properly.
"I tried, everybody tried and we showed personality because we tried to keep going. That's why we won, because we had good personality and until the end, we kept going and kept going."
It was a game Newcastle dominated without ever troubling keeper David Stockdale unduly until it entered its final phase.
Stockdale had made good, but not overly-taxing, saves from Mathieu Debuchy and Papiss Cisse before the break after seeing a goal-bound Fabricio Coloccini header blocked by team-mate Cisse during an early flurry.
Source: PA
