Pardew positive about Toon future

Alan Pardew insists that life at Newcastle United has very much moved on following the departure of Andy Carroll.

Newcastle go into Tuesday’s Premier League encounter at Birmingham on the back of a 0-0 stalemate with Blackburn Rovers on Saturday – a day when they failed to take one of the chances that Carroll would have relished.

However, while the injured striker is still waiting to make his debut for Liverpool, Pardew refused to go over old ground by talking about the huge void left in the Newcastle forward line.

Despite Shola Ameobi also being out through injury and set for a trip to the US to see a cheekbone specialist, Pardew refused to dwell on his scarce attacking stocks ahead of the trip to Birmingham:

“We’re doing OK, we’re an honest team and the fans understand that when you put on a Newcastle shirt the minimum requirement is honesty,” he said.

“Then you add quality and a bit of passion in your play and you can win games.”

“We can do that with the players we’ve got.”

United reached the 32 point mark on Saturday and the Magpies are now just two shy of the tally they got in the entire season in 2008/09 when they were relegated.

And Pardew says his side have to be wary of a Birmingham team that have won four of their last five games and reached the Carling Cup Final.

“It was just another point and it was important just to avoid defeat,” he said.

“We were very resilient on Saturday and the stats suggested we should have won the game. We had a lot of possession and entries into the box but we didn’t win.”

“We move to the next game now which is Birmingham. It’s a Birmingham side who have got their tails up.”