Erik Pieters (above)
PSV Eindhoven left-back Erik Pieters is top priority but Mike Ashley is only prepared to pay around £5.5million for him while the Dutch club are looking for between £6m and £7m to close a deal.
We hear Ashley doesn't rate him as highly as Jose Enrique, and won't pay over the odds for a player he sold to Liverpool for £6m.
It's all mind games - and that's the buzz Ashley gets out of it.
He is a gambling man, and whats it to him if he saves himself £5m and Pardew doesn't get his man?
He won't have WON the player ... but he won't have LOST the pot either.
That's the game he's playing, and he's not a man to back down, which makes it all the more frustrating for Pardew who is trying to build a team.
Pardew: “I think there is a little of brinkmanship going on and I think that’s understandable.
“If clubs are resigned to losing a player they want the best possible price so when a transfer becomes close, suddenly a lot of other clubs and the press seem to know about it.
And all sorts of accusations fly around. But when you cut through it there will be a deal made, and we’re hoping to do the two deals we need.
“It depends what accelerates the process.
“Obviously there’s one or two big moves that may happen. I don’t think they’re going to happen last minute, the other clubs will want to do business too.
“But by our own example it can happen. For us I think we would like to do our business before then but if goes to that time, that is time it will go too.”
"On Pieters, at this moment it’s not in our hands so it is difficult to say how close it is to being concluded.”