Alan Pardew trusts the return of Cheik Tioté and Fabricio Coloccini at Manchester United in the League Cup on Wednesday night will help his Newcastle United side recapture their former bite and fluency.

Pardew's players have made a decent start to the season without ever performing at their best but Tioté and Coloccini have been much missed in central midfield and at centre-half respectively. The former, who appeared as a late substitute in Sunday's 1-0 home win against Norwich, had been absent since damaging a calf during a victory over Tottenham on the season's opening day and Coloccini pulled a hamstring on international duty with Argentina this month.

"Tioté gets a grip of a game and gives you a platform to play," said Pardew. "You can start to dominate with somebody like Cheik. He puts other teams on the back foot. He's one of our most important players. We need to get him back as quickly as we can and he'll feature on Wednesday. Coloccini will get some minutes too. He gives us an assurance we've missed."

Pardew is still to decide whether Papiss Cissé will continue the quest for his first goal of the season at Old Trafford. So prolific last season, the Senegal striker is currently struggling.

"We'll help Papiss," said Pardew. "Myself and my team have got the best out of most of the players here, particularly Papiss last spring. That was easy. He was scoring goals and you could almost let him run free. Now he needs help and that's where we come in."

In contrast Demba Ba has scored four times this season already. Although Ba and his agent would like Newcastle to renegotiate the striker's contract and have, albeit tacitly, threatened to invoke the £7m release clause in that deal which will be reactivated in January, the club are in a strong position.

With the board well aware that Ba's longstanding, currently well controlled, knee condition would make it extremely difficult for him to pass a medical, his room for manoeuvre is, realistically, limited.