Pieters agent "pretty sure" on Newcastle deal.

The Joey Barton saga will continue to dominate headlines until there is a conclusion in sight. Unfortunately that conclusion is unlikely to mirror what a lot of fans want and means that we are probably going to be without Barton in the very near future.

As I said earlier, fair play to him for getting the deal he wants. I wish him all the best and will enjoy watching him and keeping up with him on Twitter, if he keeps it open of course.

However there is a real risk that the continuing tittle-tattle over Joey Barton will start to overshadow things. Not only do we have a game tonight, but we also have a very real need to get new players into this club before the transfer window shuts in just under a weeks time.

The focus had been firmly on signings, but the whole Barton saga has allowed to heat to be directed from that situation which is frightening in my opinion. We should be keeping up the heat and not diffusing it as I'm not wholly confident that we'll see more players in at Newcastle. Put simply, Newcastle don't do late transfers in...

Fortunately though one person who does have confidence that a deal involving a player arriving at St James' Park will be concluded is Piet van der Pol. No he isn't the Dutch Pol Pot, but he is the agent of Toon target Erik Pieters.

"Newcastle's interest is very serious and Erik finds the club a real challenge," Pol told the Dutch press. "I don't know the exact numbers of Newcastle's offer, but I'm pretty sure that the transfer will go ahead."

So I'm assuming that a deal is near? It seems odd that a agent would be so vocal about a move if there is nothing there to back it up although of course one could argue that an agent should be doing exactly that although an apparent increased bid from Newcastle may have greased the wheels a bit more? Who knows?

One thing is clear, and that is that we need a left-back. Forget Barton, forget Scunthorpe, forget everything. We need these players in before the close of play next week as they will have a much greater bearing on our season than Joey Barton or the match tonight. We actually need a striker aswell, and that is just as a minimum, but I'll go into that a bit more later on this afternoon hopefully.

For now, at least, it looks as though we'll have one player in, hopefully.