But news that his star striker Michael Owen will not play in a Newcastle shirt until November at the earliest, must have given him a slip of the pen. With Alan Shearer retired, Michael Chopra off to Cardiff, Albert Luque looking to an end of his Tyneside nightmare in Spain, and Shola Ameobi lucky to escape the surgeon's knife ... his striker options took the worst possible knock.
Roeder and Freddy Shepherd will have to switch to Plan B in their search for new strikers following Michael Owen's knee injury, which will see the £17m hitman miss the start of next season.
Roeder will still be searching for a top-class striker, but is now likely to need a stop-gap frontman as well, and he may have looked at the possibility of Celtic's John Hartson as a God-send last week. The deal for Hartson was laughed off by the Toon publicity machine, but it could have been seen as £500,000 well spent under the current situation.
Hartson is the fat man of Scottish football, well short of the pace required for the Premiership, but could be seen as better than nothing. And "nothing" is just about what we are left with at the moment.
United have been linked with Charlton Athletic striker Darren Bent, but Spurs are odds-on favourites to land the former Ipswich man. However, if Bent does go to Spurs there will be an even bigger question mark against Jermain Defoe's White Hart Lane future.
The Chronicle has put forward Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink as the perfect stop-gap. Apparently he told the newspaper he would love to end his career at St James' Park and in normal circumstances, at 34, he would not get the chance. However, Owen's injury last night has put a different slant on things.