Demba Ba: “It will be a terrible blow to leave the team.
“This is my club and I am proud of it, but this is for my country. I am going there to play for my country and to try to win. I am not going there for a holiday. It is a big tournament.
“I have mixed feelings about going away, but I have to do it.
"I want to make my people and my country proud in the African Nations Cup. I will feel sad leaving at this stage because everything is going well, although we need to improve some of our results.
“If the manager believes 20 league goals is a realistic target for me ... that is fair enough, but I don’t know.
“I don’t target any goals, I just target how I feel and how I am playing and at the moment I am doing well.
"That’s all I think. As long as I am having fun I am happy. It is all about having fun. As long as I can say it is fun, that is good.
"I have a lot of confidence at the moment and I am just going out and playing my football. When you are in form, you are in form and when you are not, you are not.
“I have never been in such good form. My goal per game average at Hoffenheim was not bad but I never had this kind of run before. It seems that the Premier League is the best league for me.
“It is different for me at Newcastle because I am doing it here at my club, whereas those at the top of the goalscoring list are scoring goals for Manchester City, Manchester United and Arsenal.
“They probably get more chances. I am doing this for my team-mates, for the club and for the fans as well.
“I thought Newcastle were a team and a club I could trust.
“I said to my agent to look at the club and tell me what he thought, whether I would be all right up there. He told me that Newcastle would be the best choice and he was right. It was.
“I have to give credit to the manager. He always told me I would score goals and he gives me a lot of confidence.
“At the moment I just want to carry on what I am doing now, scoring goals for him. When I got the call from Newcastle in the summer I decided quickly what I wanted to do.
“I looked at the team and wondered if I would fit in there. Obviously I made a good choice. I decided pretty quickly. It did not take a lot of thought.”