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Only three Newcastle United players have made 15 or more Championship appearances this season.

One is the Magpies captain, Jamaal Lascelles - who, even despite his magnificent form on the field, you would expect to be an almost ever-present considering he is skipper.

Another is Jonjo Shelvey, a classy midfielder who is widely regarded as being a cut above the majority of second-tier players and who Ian Holloway labelled “the best player ever to play in the Championship”.

The third? Well that one is slightly harder to guess.

Paul Dummett is the only Magpie, along with Lascelles, to have started all bar one of Newcastle’s league games this season.

That left-back slot is pretty much cemented as his own at the moment. And he deserves it.

Yet there will be a fair minority of Newcastle fans reading this who will snigger at the suggestion that Dummett deserves to be United’s first-choice left-back.

He is, for many fans, the player who can easily be scapegoated whenever things are not quite going right on the field.

“Dummett can’t attack”, “Dummett’s not quick enough”, “Dummett can’t cross”.

Time and time again at matches, or more particularly on social media, the Welshman is singled out for criticism.

Social media has helped revolutionise the way fans support their club. For the most that has been for the better.

Unfortunately, it also allows for disproportionate and sometimes overly-personal criticism to arise.

Sometimes that criticism can be fair.

If an opposition winger skips past Dummett and continuously burns him for pace - as has happened on a couple of occasions this season, including when Fulham full-back Denis Odoi left the United defender red-faced down at Craven Cottage on the opening day of the season - or if the Welshman fails to pick up his marker at the back post, that should rightly be highlighted.

But often it strays beyond criticism towards aspersion.

And this does not only apply to Dummett, and it certainly does not solely apply to Newcastle fans; supporters of all football clubs have the players they love to undervalue.

Dummett has deficiencies in his game, just like any player does. He isn’t the super-quick, modern-day, ultra-attacking full-back like DeAndre Yedlin.

Rather, he is an extremely solid defender who is adept at playing a defensive role at left-back, or even covering in at centre-half - as he may yet find himself doing opposite Newcastle team-mate Aleksandar Mitrovic for Wales in Cardiff on Saturday.

Long-term, some members of the United backroom staff even believe Dummett will shift inside permanently.

But, for now, he is Newcastle’s No 1 left-back.

Does he have flaws, just like any player does? Yes.

Yet, rather than underline every single time he mis-hits a cross or fails to overlap Yoan Gouffran down the left - weaknesses which he undoubtedly works extremely hard to improve upon - the criticism should be primarily focused on when Dummett fails to perform the tasks United fans know he is more than capable of doing.

If he is out-muscled in the air, misses a tackle or allows a winger to get in behind him, then criticism should come his way.

It needs to be fair.

And, when he does those things well, he also rightly deserves praise. At Deepdale in particular last month, Dummett was excellent and rivalled both Mitrovic and Karl Darlow for man of the match.

Every supporter has the players they don’t rate, yet it is still possible to attempt to hold a balanced view on how an individual has performed.

Now this correspondent’s particular bugbear was even more prominent during Mike Williamson’s five-year stint on Tyneside.

Everybody knew Williamson was very much an old-fashioned, no-nonsense centre-back. Technical ability was something which the 6ft 4in centre-back was not exactly blessed with, hence the ironic nickname “Mike Braziliamson”.

Therefore every fan - and, even more frustratingly, all of his team-mates - knew that if Williamson was given the ball in defence without an obvious short pass available to him, he would simply lump it forward (and more often than not it would land nowhere near a black-and-white shirt).

Rather than berate Williamson for doing what Williamson does, supporters should have harboured frustration towards the Newcastle defenders and midfielders who passed him the ball in the first place and didn’t give him an easy ‘out ball’.

Criticism for Williamson should have focused on when he failed to win challenges in the air or went walkabouts from his centre-back position. Instead, far too often, the fact he would hoof the ball forward was highlighted.

Returning to the present day and to Dummett, the left-back must be doing something right if he is getting a place on Rafa Benitez’s teamsheet for just about every game.

True Dummett would likely have been rotated more regularly had Achraf Lazaar, Massadio Haidara or Jesus Gamez been fit - Benitez contemplated resting the Welshman for the EFL Cup last-16 clash with Preston - but the fact remains that he offers balance to the United side.

While Yedlin has been attacking down the wing from right-back in recent weeks, Dummett has been marshalling the left-hand side with Gouffran for company.

There are areas of his game which Dummett needs to work at - and is working at - but he has made that left-back position very much his own because of what he CAN do.

Like any player, criticism will come Dummett’s way. But it needs to be warranted, not targeted.

Benitez certainly has an objective opinion on Dummett - and it appears to be largely a positive one.