It'll be all Jim White on the night

A quick round-up of other goings-on of interest on deadline day...

For a brief moment I thought we'd managed to offload French flop Romain Amalfitano to West Brom, but unfortunately not - it's actually Morgan Amalfitano, his older brother, who has joined the Baggies. More's the pity.

One eyebrow-raising move involved the purchase of one-time Toon target Adrian Mariappa by Crystal Palace. The Premier League new boys bought the central defender despite the fact that he's been out of favour in the Championship and has made just one appearance so far this season - in Reading's 6-0 League Cup humilation at League One Peterborough.

Meanwhile, the Eagles waved goodbye to Peter Ramage - the defender featured 43 times in their promotion season, but Ian Holloway appears to have seen sense, realised he's not Premier League material and loaned him to Championship strugglers Barnsley. Bradley Orr, who likewise never made the grade on Tyneside, has been farmed out to league leaders Blackpool by Lancastrian rivals Blackburn.

On the continent, January target Florian Thauvin left Lille for Marseille in an acrimonious and controversial £12.7m deal, just six months after signing from Bastia, to whom the Young Player of the Year had been immediately loaned back for the remainder of the season. A former Lille midfielder going on strike in an attempt to force a move? Sounds familiar...

One move that didn't happen was Shay Given's mooted switch to early Premier League pacesetters Liverpool. Instead, he's been left to collect splinters at Villa, hoping Brad Guzan picks up an injury.

Testicles, trysts, rookies and recommendations

Given the disspiriting defeat at home to West Ham, perhaps getting bitten or stung into action was just what we needed - so last week's I'm A Celebrity ... Get Me Out Of Here theme day (in honour of Ant and Dec, of course) was arguably well-timed. Sadly it didn't have the desired effect, as we lost at St James' Park again on Saturday with a performance about as pleasurable as chowing down on some kangaroo bollocks...

Meanwhile, in other news, Danny Simpson appears to be in danger of being distracted by off-field personal drama, dating X-Factor judge Tulisa while his girlfriend is pregnant with their second child. Just a thought, Danny, but given your contract situation I'd be very much concentrating on your football...

Away from St James', everyone's favourite trumpet-playing Peruvian love rat Nobby Solano has been working miracles back in his homeland, taking Universitario from relegation to the brink of qualification for the Copa Libertadores. Maybe Hartlepool, where he ended his playing career, might regret not considering his managerial application at greater length.

And finally, Blackburn's former Toon defender Bradley Orr has admitted that his loan move to Ipswich was inspired by Sir Bobby Robson - proof that the great man continues to have an influence from beyond the grave. Not that he got off to the best of starts, not escaping public criticism from manager Mick McCarthy following the Tractor Boys' 6-0 thrashing at Leicester...

Movers and shakers

Reflections on the club's activities in the transfer window from Paul tomorrow, but, in the meantime, what else of note happened on deadline day?

We looked on as several targets moved elsewhere: ex-Villa defender Liam Ridgewell continued on his tour of the West Midlands, joining West Brom from Birmingham and Ravel Morrison, the subject of a rejected bid from us earlier in the month, somewhat surprisingly left Man Utd for Championship football with West Ham. Fat Sam went striker-crazy, also adding Bristol City's Nicky Maynard and Barnsley's Ricardo Vaz Te to his forward line - but following his side's 5-1 pummelling by previously hapless Ipswich he may be feeling he should have concentrated on the other end of the pitch...

Meanwhile, Wayne Bridge, a player with whom we've been strongly linked in the past, was recruited on loan by the Mackems and so could face us at St James' Park next month. They've been able to do the deal on the cheap too, paying a fraction of his wages in a similar deal to the one struck by MK Dons for Alan Smith.

When Bolton steamed in with an improved £7m bid for Wilfried Zaha, I suspected it would kick off a furious bidding war - but against the odds everything remained quiet and the winger remains a Crystal Palace player. Equally surprising was the silence surrounding Huddersfield's Jordan Rhodes and Blackburn's Junior Hoilett.

Several old boys were on the move too. Sebastien Bassong swapped Spurs for Wolves on loan (a deal I really feel we should have pursued ourselves), tonight's opponents Blackburn identified QPR's out-of-favour right-back Bradley Orr as the man to lead them to safety (yes, me neither) and, in perhaps the most surprising move of the day, Spurs took a gamble on chronic physio-botherer Louis Saha. Perhaps Droopy's mind's elsewhere at the moment...

On the subject of old boys, Rocky played and scored a year to the day that Jabba lined his pockets with £35m of Liverpool's cash. That makes it a cool £5m per goal. Meanwhile, Demba Ba has more than twice as many in just six months, and came on a free. Doesn't look quite such a bad deal now as it did then, does it?