Greeks bearing gifts

Last year, it was Conor Newton and Paul Dummett (and very nearly Curtis Good); this year, the Toon loanee collecting a medal while his parent club's trophy cabinet continues to gather dust is Mehdi Abeid. Not that he was much help in Panathinaikos' 4-1 Greek Cup victory over PAOK - more of a hindrance, conceding the penalty from which PAOK scored.

Meanwhile, another forgotten man of the Newcastle squad, Romain Amalfitano, belatedly scored his first goal for Ligue 2 outfit Dijon. Pardon the groansome pun, but he doesn't appear to have cut the mustard back in his native country and will no doubt be high on our list of players to ship out in the summer.

The boyo done good

Setting transfer window issues aside, congratulations to Paul Dummett, whose elevation to the Newcastle first-team squad has resulted in a similar elevation to the senior Welsh squad for the forthcoming international fixtures. Whether he makes his bow alongside the world's most expensive player remains to be seen.

Fellow left-sided player Shane Ferguson has been enduring a tougher time at Birmingham. Despite creating the opening goal for Matt Green with a delicious cross in the 3-2 defeat at Leicester, the Northern Irishman was dropped to the bench for Saturday's visit of Ipswich. Blues appear to have continued last season's form, much to Lee Clark's dismay, and the picture is even less rosy off the pitch, as detailed in a recent post on The Two Unfortunates.

Meanwhile, Mehdi Abeid scored a somewhat fortuitous goal for his loan club Panathanaikos at the weekend. Scoring is something that Adam Campbell wasn't given the opportunity to do on loan in Cumbria - he's already back on Tyneside, a clearly disgruntled Silver Fox commenting "That didn’t work out at Carlisle, and he won’t be going back there". He may only be back temporarily, though, with a move to hook up with Conor Newton at St Mirren a possibility.

Steve Davis may have talked up Brad Inman's future, but his recent past at Crewe has been far from encouraging. He played for 21 minutes off the bench as the Railwaymen lost to League One leaders Leyton Orient, and was then handed a start for the trip to Swindon last weekend - only for the home side to romp to a 5-0 victory. The identity of the Robins' first scorer? Inman's former club colleague the Lone Ranger.

On the subject of familiar faces, the Reserves were beaten 5-4 by West Ham yesterday, despite taking a three-goal lead through a Jonathyn Quinn hat-trick. You ain't seen nothing like the mighty Quinn? Well, the Hammers had - one Elliot Lee, who grabbed a hat-trick of his own, two goals coming from the spot. The onlooker with conflicted loyalties? That would be his dad, Rob Lee.

Two more out of the door

Michael Richardson and Mehdi Abeid are the latest fringe players to be allowed to leave on loan. Richardson, who had a spell with Gillingham this spring, has gone back to League Two with Accrington Stanley. His namesake Leam left the club in April, so the manager he'll be turning out for is none other than James Beattie, once upon a time strongly linked with his parent club as a potential replacement for Wor Al. Abeid, meanwhile, has teamed up with Greek outfit Panathinaikos, and like Richardson is probably looking forward to getting some game time. It's doubtful that either has much of a long-term future on Tyneside.

Locker clearances underway

According to the Journal, Romain Amalfitano and Mehdi Abeid have both been deemed as surplus to requirements and advised to find new clubs ahead of next season.

Amalfitano sank without a trace following some brief Europa League forays and Abeid followed a similar path (albeit his farewell appears to have been slightly later during the abysmal capitulation at Brighton in the FA Cup). Neither are likely to be missed.

According to the article, Dan Gosling has also been told he can leave, though his departure looks set to initially be on loan. Despite looking a coup when we nicked him from Everton, his time on Tyneside has been dogged by injury and he's never established himself in the first team. As such, his departure has felt inevitable for some time.

Sammy's a Smoggie (temporarily)

With our stars returning to form and fitness alongside our clutch of January imports, it's no surprise that Little Big Lad has been sent out on loan - something that would surely have happened sooner had we not suffered such a grievous injury crisis earlier in the season. The Smogs' gain - he certainly has the potential to make a big impact in the Championship run-in - is also ours, as he should return a better player for some regular first-team football at a good, competitive standard. You could argue that he's had his chance to shine for us but has flattered to deceive, so this is an important opportunity for him.

Meanwhile, three of our other loanees were reunited north of the border on Saturday. Conor Newton and Paul Dummett lined up for St Mirren, and Mehdi Abeid for their hosts St Johnstone. Abeid was withdrawn just after an hour, but not before his corner had set up Rowan Vine for the only goal of the game.

A bright future and a dismal past

So it wasn't quite the deathly quiet transfer deadline day we'd been expecting. There was another arrival, for a start: Servette's Kevin Mbabu. Surely some mistake, though - the dreadlocked defender is Swiss, not French... Also unlike our other transfer window signings, the 17-year-old is very much one for the future - albeit a player who, according to the Journal at least, we've nicked ahead of Arsenal and the two Manchester clubs.

Meanwhile, the Xisco Kid is no longer a drain on our resources, his contract having been terminated by mutual consent. No sooner had he been released than he'd signed up with Spanish second tier side Cordoba. And thus ends his unhappy history on Tyneside, one which started promisingly enough with a debut goal. But that came in a dreadful home defeat to Hull and turned out to be the only time he hit the net for us in eleven measly appearances over four and a half years. £5.7m per goal - even 'Appy 'Arry's eyes would water at that sort of statistic.

Also continuing to ply their trade away from St James' Park, though only temporarily, are Curtis Good and Bradden Inman, whose loans at Bradford and Crewe have been extended until the end of the season. Mehdi Abeid is our latest loanee, farmed out to St Johnstone in the SPL and with plenty to prove, you'd imagine, following the Silver Fox's recent comments about the failure of our young players to suggest they're able to make the grade. (Incidentally, whatever happened to the Silver Fox's opinion that the SPL is too weak for our players to learn much there? He'd already sent Paul Dummett and Conor Newton to St Mirren even before Abeid's move.)

What's the French for "clique"?

Confirmation of the Francophone clique within the Newcastle squad: fast forward to about 16:30 and you'll find footage of Dreamboat, HBA, Demba Ba, Sylvain Marveaux, Mehdi Abeid and Romain Amalfitano enjoying a meal and lively game of cards. Speaking French is something the Silver Fox has apparently tried to discourage on the training ground, but the sight of Ba, HBA and Dreamboat on friendly terms and enjoying each other's company can only be good for the cohesion of the team. That said, fellow Francophone player Papiss Cisse is nowhere to be seen...

The footage is part of a twenty-minute Canal+ piece on Dreamboat, which also features the Silver Fox and Mathieu Debuchy - probably primarily of interest to those who can speak French, but it does show Dreamboat working with his personal trainer in his back garden, in his gym and on the beach (presumably on top of the team training sessions held in the mornings).

A model professional, and one we could definitely do with being fit for the visits of Bordeaux and Man Utd - perhaps he might be able to reprise his goalscoring feats against the latter...

Vive la revolution!

It's fitting, really, that our renaissance should have been inspired and driven by a clutch of players of French provenance (if not nationality). Following on from TBW's identification of our Gallic contingent as a key factor in our expectation-confounding season thus far comes an article from the BBC's Jimmy Smallwood focusing exclusively on our imports from across the Channel.

Admittedly Smallwood's piece is limited in scope, drawing only upon comments from "French football expert" Ben Lyttleton, BBC Radio Newcastle's Mick Lowes and Sir Bobby Robson's mercurial Ginola replacement Laurent Robert (notably, another ex-player talking enthusiastically about his time on Tyneside). It's also true that he somewhat overstates the case - HBA and Sylvain Marveaux have been largely restricted to bit-part roles, Obertan Kenobi has shown only flashes of quality rather than consistency and not one of our impressively parsimonious first-choice back five hails from France. Lowes is guilty too - promising though Mehdi Abeid looks, he's yet to feature for the first team in the Premier League.

However, it surely can't be disputed that Dreamboat plus French speakers Mr T and Demba Ba (the latter born in Paris though representing Senegal internationally) have been central to our brilliant start, contributing intelligent midfield craft, energetic defensive protection and goals respectively to the cause. They've been instrumental in making us tough, resilient and hard to beat - far from Groundskeeper Willie's "cheese-eating surrender monkeys".

It's early days yet, though, so Lowes is a bit premature in hailing the Gallic recruits as an unqualified success. We can't really judge until at least halfway through the season - and certainly not until we've at least got the next three difficult assignments out of the way.