Welcome to the world of the modern transfer deal - a far cry from the sanitised version portrayed on Sky Sports News and best-selling computer game Football Manager.
The Sunday Sun today attempts to shed some light on why January is such a tortuous month for football clubs - and why the transfers that might come to pass in the last seconds of the window have probably been six months in the making.

Most of the deals that Newcastle are lining up have been worked on since September 1, the day the window snapped shut.

It opened up with the following sentiment: "Steve Bruce paid the price of the high expectations in the North East."

By sending Joey Barton's agent packing without even the sniff of a contract offer yesterday, Mike Ashley and Derek Llambias sent a message. It was a clarion call to the dressing room, to the manager and to any agents presuming the club's need to recruit gives them a licence to make unreasonable demands - and it leaves no-one in any doubt that they are in firm control of events at St James' Park.

Early Cup exits combined with European dreams frittering away in mid-March meant the battle for regional bragging rites became the sole focus for Sunderland and Newcastle as the campaign wound to a less-than-compelling conclusion.

Forthright opinions are not rare in the world of Premier League football but finding someone at the peak of his powers willing to express them certainly is, which is reason why any dialogue with Barton is invariably dynamite.

The advance of the struggling pack combined with United's own flat-lining form has rightly raised alarm on Tyneside but panic is not the appropriate reaction. Not yet, anyway.

While United were effectively securing Premier League survival in the Second City on Tuesday evening, another potentially significant moment for Newcastle supporters was taking place in our own city.

The mercurial Martins, of course, was part of the team that took United down in the Second City two years ago and he proved to be something of a divisive figure among the Toon Army during the fag end of that infamous 2008/09 campaign.

Well look no further than the Kelvin Hall international sports arena in Glasgow - the modest but intimidating venue that played host to one of the most impressive displays of this or any other year by the Newcastle Eagles.

Yes, the wounds inflicted by Andy Carroll's departure for Liverpool are still raw - and seeing him unveiled as the Reds new number nine yesterday will hardly have salved them.

Perhaps the Toon Army should be immune to all now, given the frequency with which Mike Ashley seems to visit these mini-crises on St James' Park but yesterday felt different. More profound somehow, as if a line had been crossed and there is no going back from here.

For the second successive day the BBC was leading their topical news phone-in on 'Linogate' as politicians, social commentators and pundits scramble to hop on this latest bandwagon.

Austere broadsheets and red tops alike have felled forests to cover the number of pages devoted to Keys and Andy Gray and their frankly ridiculous views on the merits of the fairer sex in football.

I ask because thats how I read the sad saga of Darren Bent's move to Aston Villa, which leaves me feeling thoroughly conflicted.

Over the past 24 hours Bent has been pilloried by supporters and - privately at least - by his club. They have a point - and a right - to feel deeply wounded by a development that caught them completely unawares.

Not his verdict on the game or the key on-the-field battles, more his reflections on playing in the soulless 1996/7 Roker Park derby. In case you'd forgotten, that contest was put on with no Newcastle fans because of safety concerns from Northumbria Police.