Obviously he wants to provide genuine competition for Tim Krul this season ... but how do you cope with a player who only played ONE game last season ... and wasn't even involved very much with the Reserve team set-up?
Elliot is indeed a risk.
The twenty-six-year-old Elliot only played once for the Magpies, conceding three at Nottingham Forest in the League Cup, and he is untired in the Premiership ... never mind in Europe.
But Pardew has gone for the former Charlton Athletic stopper, rather than retain the experienced Fraser Forster ... who has experience of playing 91 first team games for Celtic in two seasons on loan ... including ten games in Europe.
Rob Elliot: “When I first came I was a squad keeper, now I’m hopefully the No.2 pushing Tim.
“The more games you play, the more competitions you’re in, hopefully the more opportunities you get to play.
“The plan is still to eventually become No.1 and play every week but you have to just take every chance you get to play well and show the manager you can do it.
“Obviously if he ever does need a keeper, he knows he can come to me and rely on me.
“I think what you find at our club is if you perform well, you stay in the team.
“That’s how it works. With the squad we’ve got, we’ve got competition in every single place and that really, really keeps everyone on their toes. No one is stuck in a rut with our squad. It is a good mentality to have – if you don’t have that you end up with poor performances.
“It is a fantastic mentality to have and we all know that whoever has those shirts on the first day of the season deserves them and has done everything they can to get them.
“If you know you’re playing to stay in the team, performances are raised.
“We have to keep going forward.
“With this squad, and the age of it, it’s only going to get better and better year on year.
“If we can match last year, get a top-half finish and do well in the one of the cups, that would be an excellent season.
“It’s difficult to put a target on it because we did so well last season, but finishing below fifth wouldn’t be a nightmare. We’ve got an extra competition and for some of us, we’ve never played European football before.”