Alan Pardew: “I don’t think the process at Newcastle is very different from elsewhere in the Premier League.
“It’s exactly what I had at West Ham in terms of chief executive trying to do the deal – and it’s as simple as that.
"The board, and in this case we don’t really have a board – it’s Mike to a degree, agreeing with the deal that the chief executive has done.
“That’s the same as every other club that I know and how it works. I keep hearing these things about this football club that are actually just not true. I don’t think the procedure is any different.
“At West Ham I would tell Aldridge, my chief executive there, I would like to do a deal for him. He would go away and try and do the deal and most of the time it didn’t happen, to be honest.
“Usually because the other club make it impossible to happen. It is the same at Stoke – it is the same at Manchester United.
“Gervinho was a player that I was quite keen on bringing here.
“That was one that we had no control over – I think it was probably done before we got there. But outside of that, not really disappointed to have missed anyone.
“There’s always one or two you would like to have been involved in but we’re very focused on where we are right now. Of course, negotiations are ongoing – that’s all I can really say at the moment.”