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With Newcastle’s players attracting a lot of interest, and Tottenham eager to bolster their squad in the January transfer window, the Life’s A Pitch panel expects Alan Pardew and Harry Redknapp to be the busiest managers this month. With talk growing of potential offers for several key Newcastle players, the panel wonders whether owner Mike Ashley will be able to resist any tempting bids for his stars, and where any sales would leave Pardew and his exciting team.

“I think he [Pardew] deserves a huge amount of backing now from Mike Ashley and [managing director] Derek Llambias,” says the Daily Telegraph’s Jason Burt. “I just fear that things might happen that he’s not got control over. And I wonder about Demba Ba and whether his contract allows him to go [following reports of a £10million contract release clause].” Other players linked with moves away include Cheik Tiote, Yohan Cabaye, Tim Krul, and Fabricio Coloccini.

Jason believes selling these key Newcastle players would be “more damaging than losing [Kevin] Nolan and [Joey] Barton and people like that, because they should have gone, it was the right time for them to go. This is a young, vibrant exciting side that needs to grow and develop and be kept together.”

Whether Newcastle intend to try to keep these players is a measure of their ambition, says the Daily Mirror’s John Cross. “He [Ba] must be the most spectacular signing of the season so far, and there will be a queue of clubs wanting to sign that sort of striker for £10million,” he says. “It’s a test of their ambition and how much they want to keep these players – Ba, and I think that Tottenham quiet fancy Tim Krul, from what I hear.”

Krul is not the only player interesting Spurs this month, says Dominic Fifield of the Guardian, referring to Blackburn’s Junior Hoilett and Christopher Samba. “Someone like Junior Hoilett is made for Harry Redknapp, and also for [chairman] Daniel Levy, because he’ll look at his age [21] and think, ‘Well, there’s a sell-on value here as well,’” explains Dominic. Samba, he says, is also a ”Redknapp-type player, who would presumably do really well at Tottenham and cover an area where they have potentially been a bit weak this season.”

The panel also looks at the transfer goings-on involving Arsenal, Fulham and Chelsea.

Related articles:

Fanzone: Still work to be done for Pardew’s men

Video: The Life’s A Pitch managers of 2011 

Video: Pardew hopes to cure Toon’s ills in the transfer market 

Iain Macintosh: No jokes at Newcastle now, just quiet progress

Video: Townsend, Donovan and Mannone: Hit or miss?

Watch Newcastle and Tottenham live on BT Vision:
Newcastle v QPR, live 1pm, 15 January, Sky Sports 1
Man City v Tottenham, live 1pm, 22 January, Sky Sports 1

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