Pardew the text pest!

It seems as though an olive branch of peace will be extended early next week, with the aim of hopefully clearing up the Joey Barton saga once and for all.

I was just reading the Sunday Sun and found it amusing that Alan Pardew is planning on texting Joey Barton next week. I don't know why it tickled me, it just did. Perhaps Pardew can try his hand at Tweeting to put a rather ironic and amusing twist to what is hopefully going to be the end of the story?

There is nothing new to report on the situation with Joey at the moment. He is still exiled with the development squad and all parties are taking "time out" to reflect on things. With Arsenal now less than a week away a sense of closure is desperately needed on yet another pre-season distraction.

“Joey’s situation is where we were on Friday. We’re all taking a deep breath and seeing where we go,” Pardew told the Sunday Sun.

“You want to have your best players and I’m a manager who wants my best players playing for the club."

“Joey needs to buy into what we’re doing – if he doesn’t see that then he’ll probably go. But you never know – we’re all taking some time out. We’ll assess it next week."

“Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday me and Joey will have a couple of texts and we’ll take it from there.”

One question: why not just speak to him? It's a novel idea but it may just work. Mind you, I sometimes text the Mrs when she is in the same room as it's just easier, and she doesn't have a violent past to consider either! I jest of course...

This pre-season has brought about more questions when in reality we wanted answers to some already outstanding questions. The Joey Barton situation needs resolving, as does the Jose Enrique situation, as does the situation with the squad. With little time left it looks as though all of those situations will roll over into the new season.

I'm not one to keep hold of players who aren't overly interested in playing for us in truth, and that includes Barton and Enrique. My view is that you can never really give 100% to something that you aren't fully behind, which is wrong when we're talking about footballers who earn millions of pounds a year to do just that, but hey it's the world we live in.

I'd love Barton to stay but, as Pardew says, he needs to be on board or else we'll just see more sly digs and veiled comments on Twitter which will end up further upsetting the dressing room and causing more unrest within the ranks at St James' Park.

Time will tell of course so we'll just have to wait and see whether or not it can be resolved. I do wonder what that first text would be though?

Hi Joey. I rly wnt u 2 stay. TB pls <3 Al.