Quote of the day

"In the summer of 2011, Newcastle failed to sign a striker to replace Andy Carroll, who had joined Liverpool for £35m more than six months earlier."

As has been pointed out in the comments beneath the article, in his haste to stick the boot into Pardew and particularly JFK, the Torygraph's Luke Edwards appears to have completely forgotten about Demba Ba. OK, so we didn't appreciate he was a replacement at the time, but he certainly proved us wrong.

Lest we forget, Edwards is already banned from St James' Park and this article is hardly likely to curry any favour, given that it's a mixture of source-free statements of apparent fact (mainly about the alleged collapse of the Darren Bent deal) and conjecture such as the following: "Pardew has been trying to stay positive in public, despite the frustration that must be building up as his relationship with Kinnear already begins to show clear signs of strain."

In Edwards' defence, that particular claim seems fairly reasonable - after all, having arrived at the club in mid-June boasting of his contacts around the world, JFK has yet to deliver a single player a month and a half on. If you were the Silver Fox, wouldn't you be royally pissed off, and not just because you've got that oaf to answer to?