Le Toon are right to rely on their French resistance force

28Jan 2013

Betfair

Newcastle boss Alan Pardew has been the busiest in the transfer window. Five new French signings should steer them clear of relegation worries, says Ralph Ellis...

"Bonjour. Bienvenue à Newcastle." I don't know if Alan Pardew speaks any French but he'll have had to learn that phrase in the last week or so, if nothing else.

The Toon is going all 'Français' for the rest of the season. Faced with a horror run of results, Pardew has hopped on the Eurostar and signed not one but FIVE new French players to turn things round.

He had already introduced right back Mathieu Debuchy to his side after paying a £5.5million fee to Lille at the start of the window. But by the time his team coach pulls into Villa Park tomorrow night he will have four more recruits from across the Channel at his disposal. It is a recruitment drive that has gone largely unnoticed outside the North East, during a week when we've all been worrying about Bradford, ball boys, and FA Cup upsets. But it marks a significant change in what we can expect from Newcastle in the second half of the season.

As of this morning The Toon are the club who have done most to shake things up during this transfer window. With three more days left in most cases there has been far more talk than action - in fact as of this morning some eight of the 20 teams in the Barclays Premier League had yet to bring in a single new signing. Four others had so far added just one player to their squad.

Set alongside that, Pardew's plunge into the market shows ambition. And the players he has brought all have pedigree.

Debuchy is a 27-year-old full back who can also play as the holding midfielder and has 13 caps to his name; then there is striker Mapou Yanga-Mbiwa, a 23-year-old with three full caps so far who cost £7million from Montpellier; Moussa Sissoko is 6ft 2ins midfielder who has played five times for France and at 23 has been called the new Patrick Vieira; left back Massadio Haïdara from Nancy is just 20 but highly rated, while 26-year-old wide man Yoan Grouffan has 140 games for Bordeaux under his belt.

Now of course signing so many new players at once represents a gamble. And there's little doubt that the tactic of plundering the French market is based on value - the cost of transfer fees and wages fits comfortably into Newcastle's budget. But the bigger gamble was to do nothing, and the arrival of so many new faces will have sent a clear message to the dressing room that the club has ambition to drag themselves away from the lower half of the table. They have under performed, and the owner and manager are doing something about it.

Newcastle are 4.7 for relegation after being dragged into the mire by a bad run of one point from five games in which they've let in 15 goals, culminating in the 2-1 home defeat by Reading a week ago. It's a worse run since Boxing Day than even Aston Villa who have picked up two points in that time while conceding 12.

But while Villa boss Paul Lambert has carried on muttering that his young squad "will be fine", then getting knocked out of two cups in four days to lower league opposition, Newcastle have acted. The new faces make them an absolute steal at the current price of 2.8 for an away win at Villa Park tomorrow night.