Eight days to make a difference.

Newcastle are still to make a real breakthrough in this January transfer window, and time is ticking along if the squad is to be added to.

I'm not counting Hatem Ben Arfa in that as he was already our player anyway, albeit temporarily, and he is injured so can't make a difference to us at the minute, but as I said the other day, there is need to panic and no need to rush as we don't play again until the transfer window is slammed firmly shut.

That will hopefully give Alan Pardew the time he needs to focus on getting at least one body through the door, and hopefully it will be a player that we can utilise straight away rather than one where we have to wait for them to recover from injury until we can see the best of them.

Pardew has held a meeting with Mike Ashley to discuss the movement of players during this window, and from that he is hoping to secure the services of one of our key players (Barton or Enrique in my opinion) and get one new player through the door to add to the ranks.

"I had a good meeting with Mike this week where we discussed a lot of things. I keep stressing to him the importance of the group that we've got, and we are very close to securing another person, a key player, and that's been my focus," Pardew told nufc.co.uk.

"For the next 10 days I will focus on bringing a player in who will help us."

Short but sweet, but it does tell us that we can expect to see one new face during this window. It also tells us that maths is not Alan Pardew's strong suit!

Hopefully it will be on the right-wing as we are looking very light on that particular flank, especially now we have lost Wayne Routledge for the season after his loan move to QPR. Routledge may not have been a world beater and struggled to make any real impact for us in the Premier League, but at least he gave us another option, another body. Getting someone in to replace him should be a priority in my opinion.

It will be interesting to see who this key player is aswell. My money is on Joey Barton or Jose Enrique, although I think that securing Jose Enrique would be the smarter move due to his age and rising stock. I'm not saying that Barton is not a priority, but I feel that Jose should be the priority simply because without him we have no real recognised left-back.

One in and one to stay then by the looks of it.