Alan Smith is on the verge of joining League One outfit MK Dons on loan until the end of the season according to the Chronicle.

However keep your party hats dry for now as Newcastle will still be paying 96% of his wages according to Sky Sports.

That means that we’ll have shed the princely sum of £2,400 a week from our wagebill based on Smith’s rumoured wage of £60,000 a week from us. That isn’t a lot in fairness and it looks as though we’ll have to wait his contract expires in the summer before we can get rid of his wage fully and put it to, well, put it to better use to be perfectly honest.

Smith is about as far down the pecking order at NUFC as you can get, mainly because he has lost it as a Premier League player. He’s not been the same since he broke his ankle against Liverpool in 2006 but Sam Allardyce still went ahead and signed him. For £6m!

I know some people moan about Smith and mention his wages, but I don’t have an issue with that. It’s not his fault he was offered 60k a week and he is within his rights to pick it up. Fortunately it shouldn’t be an issue again thanks to our transfer policy. I wonder if Alan Smith is still Mike Ashley’s favourite player these days?

So that’s the end of the road for Smith then, and I’d like to thank him for playing a role in our promotion back to the Premier League. He’s also been a model professional in his time here and hasn’t been in any trouble or attracted any headlines and he is also pretty good to have around the training ground going by what the other players say. Unfortunately, he’s just not good enough to get anywhere near our team anymore.

Good luck Smudge. I hope you enjoy the football you’ll be getting and I hope you help MK Dons achieve their aim of promotion to the Championship.

Goodbye Alan.