Having failed to get Sinclair (Man City), Downing (Liverpool), Bent (Aston Villa) and Andy Carroll ... Pardew does not know what to do next to get Ashley to get out the biscuit tin.
United’s pursuit of Bafétimbi Gomis has run into a dead end as Newcastle consider their next move in a striker hunt that looks set to go right to the end of August.
Alan Pardew: “What is important is that we keep a very, very close eye on English-based players and Joe (Kinnear), Graham and myself are very aware that although the French market has been massively successful for us we can’t take our eye off that.
“We’re in the fabric of the scouting network there.
"We’re as good as Lyon, Paris Saint-Germain, St Etienne – our network is as good as theirs and because we’ve got Premier League finance and French players have been successful here their agents want to bring their players here and the players want to come here.
“We have a massive advantage there but we can’t constantly take that advantage and not take our eye off other parts of the world and also the English market because we’re getting very close to the Uefa limit (on foreign players).
"We’ve lost Perchy, we almost lost Dan Gosling so it’s something we do need to focus on.
“Joe is very much aware that he does need to co-ordinate that and we need to make our search bigger.
“Graham can’t be everywhere – he can’t be all over England, all over Holland and France.
“That’s impossible. Our scouts can be and then Graham comes in near the end and I come in right near the end.
“This is constant with a striker because everyone wants a striker at their football club.
“Joe’s fallen on a difficult issue.
"Whether he’s here or Tottenham or wherever he was going to turn up it’s tough and I sympathise with him on that. But the bottom line is that’s his job to get them over the line.”