Joey Barton

ALAN Pardew has backed Joey Barton to keep answering his critics with performances – and he is “confident” that he’ll be doing it in black and white for the rest of the season.

The midfielder remains on the transfer list and available for nothing but, after a typically eventful weekend, it appears as if he does have a future at St James’ Park, where he delivered a high-octane display to help nullify the threat of Arsenal.

That performance was bookmarked by a fight with Gervinho which saw the Gunners striker ordered off and countless rows on social networking site Twitter – including joking that United legend and Match of the Day pundit Alan Shearer is a “slaphead”.

Pardew would be forgiven for tearing his hair out at Barton’s capacity to create headlines and conflict but the Magpies boss insists he wants the midfielder on board for the rest of the campaign.

And, after constructive talks earlier in the week, he is sure that is moving closer to fruition.

“As far as I’m concerned, with Joey and me, that’s the end of things,” said Pardew. “He showed me what I wanted to see on Saturday. Of course he’s only got one year left on his contract and I’ve learned the lessons from (what happened with) Andy Carroll, so I won’t be saying that he’ll definitely be staying, but I think he will.

“If we have a fully focused Joey Barton, that is a massive asset for me as a manager.”

Inevitably, Barton drew criticism for being involved in conflict, but Pardew has told him to use the negativity to fire his own performances.

“On Thursday I asked him for assurances about what he was going to do and how he was going to play for us and he answered them,” the Newcastle boss said.

“The most important thing for Joey is answering on the football pitch and he did that. He sent the right message and I think that’s important.

“There’s been a lot said and written about him and I’m sure a lot of it he didn’t like, but I told him the most important thing was to go and do what he does best and that’s play football – that’s what he did.” Overall it was a performance that filled Pardew with optimism – and he hopes supporters who feared the end of Newcastle’s famous fighting spirit with the sale of Kevin Nolan were pacified by the way they performed.

Pardew is confident of adding two new names before the Wear-Tyne derby on Saturday but is being made to wait on PSV Eindhoven’s Holland left-back Erik Pieters. The club were hopeful of having that deal over the line by now but there is dispute over the size of the fee and personal terms which has held up matters.

United hope to make progress on a striker by Tuesday, with Mevlüt Erdinç not out of the picture yet.

Whatever happens, Pardew believes that United have shown enough to silence some of the doubters..

“You certainly couldn’t fault our spirit on Saturday,” he said. “Look at Jonas, running 50 metres in the second minute of injury time to make sure that Walcott didn’t get a cross in. That gives you the indication that things are okay.

“We will fight in every corner of the pitch for the black and white. And I thought that was apparent.”