HAS this good start to the season just been an Indian Summer for Newcastle United?

Losing Shola Ameobi and Jonas Gutierrez for the Leicester game on Monday through injury is a blow. I am more concerned with how players will perform once the transfer window closes. We will see their true colours then.

I will be looking at how every individual is performing when we see how those that are left come to terms with the fact that they are playing Championship football for the next few months.

Will we see a dip in performance after the transfer window closes? I’m not a cynical person by nature but I am a cynic when it comes to footballers, I know them too well.

And I suspect a few of the Newcastle team have only been playing well to secure a move away from the club.

Once they are stuck here let’s see if their effort is genuine.

There were positives to take from the games against Crystal Palace and Huddersfield.

My belief is that the very least the players can do is, after two shambolic seasons they’ve put the supporters through, to get the club back in the Premier League at the first go. That is the very least that can be expected.

But what concerns me, and what won’t be doing morale in the dressing room any good, is that there have been a lot of sales and nothing coming in whatsoever.

Signing Danny Simpson on loan is a drop in the ocean compared with the experienced players allowed to leave the club.

The squad is threadbare.

It’s all very well players going out and money being put into the bank but it seems as if it’s just repaying the owner, who has no intention of investing further with a view to getting the club back where it belongs.

It seems to me that the people in charge aren’t that bothered about getting the club back in the Premier League. Or they really don’t understand the game of football.

The injuries they have picked up will expose how threadbare the squad is but I see no signs that the owner is reacting to that situation.

There is one name, however, I think could make himself, a very bright name for himself – Nile Ranger.

He has every chance but he must get on the field and do the right thing. He must make himself invaluable to the team. And the best way of doing that is to score goals. Shola just seems to have realised that. He seems to have forgotten for the last four years that goals are what it is all about.

If you get goals on anything like a regular basis you will be the first name on the team sheet and that is what Nile needs to aim for. Scoring is the most difficult and most important thing a footballer can do.

That is why strikers will always be the most valuable players in any team. Second to them in my opinion are goalkeepers.

And talking about keepers, I think that Tim Krul should have kept the jersey following his appearance at West Brom.

Steve Harper is a very good lad but there are question marks all over the place in his performances.

He has to dispel those concerns and only he can do that.

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