Jose leaving us in limbo.

As reported in The Chronicle earlier on, and as suspected by quite a few people including me, Jose Enrique's silence does seem to be deafening.

Alan Pardew has admitted that it seems as though the Spaniard doesn't want to deal with the club at the moment after he received the offer of a contract from Newcastle. There have been no new developments on the saga, and whilst it's not nailed on that he will leave Newcastle the signs don't look promising. In fact to me it almost looks as though Jose is waiting to see if another club comes along, which is his right I guess.

“At the moment it looks like he doesn’t want to deal with us,” Pardew told The Chronicle.

“We have been asked to make him an offer but there has been no progress since then. I still hope we can do something but at the moment we’re still waiting for Jose. I don’t think there’s anything more I can really add on that situation at this stage.”

Therein lies the problem of letting your players run down to the last year of their contract. Don't get me wrong, I'm a bit miffed that Jose is leaving us dangling, albeit by a seemingly thinner thread day-by-day, but at the end of the day the club have got themselves into this position.

To me Enrique is not like Joey Barton or Kevin Nolan. He is a completely different kettle of fish and offering him a five-year deal at the start of least season would have aligned with their stated policy of not giving long contracts to older players. He would have been 24 which would have taken him to the age 0f 29 under a new deal. We'd have had him for the best years of his career or would have received a hefty fee for his services.

Still, it's not to be by the sounds of it, unless nobody else comes in for him. To be honest I think that is a long shot.

Enrique is not blameless in all of this though and I hold him partly responsible. Granted he could do nothing about his contract, but at the same time I never realised it would be such a hardship staying at a club that he apparently loves. It was a different story when nobody would touch him with a bargepole though wasn't it? Still, I guess it doesn't matter now.

What does matter is getting a decision from Jose. If he wants to go then fair enough, tell us so we can make plans. Apparently we are looking at senior left-backs just in case and Neil Taylor won't be our main choice, although I personally remain sceptical about that.

Rather than looking at other senior left-backs I'd prefer to keep our current señor left-back.

It doesn't look like it's going to happen though, unfortunately.