Demba Ba could still leave Newcastle in January, says Pardew

Newcastle manager Alan Pardew has revealed that striker Demba Ba could still leave the club in January, with his £7m release clause still applicable.

The Senegalese forward was left out of the starting line-up for their last league match against Everton before coming off the bench at half-time to grab both goals.

However, there has been tension behind the scenes in recent times, with the striker reportedly frustrated with his role at the club, and Pardew has confessed that the release clause that was previously assumed to have expired in the summer is still active.

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He told reporters: "I think maybe I made a penalty. It was a difficult situation for the referee, it was difficult for him to see it. I think we should have had maybe one penalty, but overall we deserved to win.

"We scored a goal at the right moment, but then I believe we were nervous for 10-15 minutes. In the second half, we were stronger.

"The first game in the Champions League is always hard. We started well, but after that we made a few mistakes and caused ourselves some problems. It was tense in the end, we defended a bit more than we wanted but the main thing is we won the three points."

Michael Carrick's seventh minute strike gave United the lead, and they missed a golden chance to seal the points when Nani's spot-kick was easily saved by Fernando Muslera after Rafael had been brought down inside the box.

That miss was Sir Alex Ferguson's side's third of the season after Javier Hernandez had also been denied from 12 yards in Saturday's 4-0 over Wigan and Robin van Persie fluffed his effort against Southampton, and Vidic feels that the Red Devils need to work on their spot kicks if they are to improve in that area.

He added: "I missed one as well for the national team! I think we've had many players who've missed penalties over the last six months, obviously it's something we should work on."

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