Newcastle United manager Alan Pardew said yesterday the club will not sign a striker in January after confirming Modibo Maiga’s proposed move from Sochaux has collapsed.

A medical showed a potential knee problem prompting Newcastle to pull out of a six million pound transfer and even though Pardew will lose top scorer Demba Ba to African Nations Cup duty next month he said the club would prefer to wait until the summer to find the right man.

“I don’t think we will be bringing a striker in this window after the collapse of Maiga, which we had put a lot of work into. As far as we are concerned, we will go with what we have got.

“You can imagine the player is probably more disappointed than anybody else, but these things happen and we will have to do a lot of work now between now and the summer to locate another striker.”

Newcastle also need to do business in defence after an Achilles injury ruled out Steven Taylor for the rest of the season.

Pardew said: “You have to pay over the odds in this window, everybody does, and you have to accept that if you are going to invest in this transfer window, and we won’t in terms of a new striker.

“We are looking at bringing maybe a defender in. We need to bring in a defender.”