Mike Ashley's legal team insists Alan Pardew's Newcastle United job isn't on the line against Stoke City. The Evening Chronicle says the Magpies owner told a London-based newspaper in jest that Pardew had just one more game.

Ashley is reported to have said: "If we lose on Monday, Pardew is gone.

"I've had enough. He's dead, finished."

But Ashley's legal team have claimed that his comments - made in a London bar on Thursday night - were not serious.