Newcastle United boss Alan Pardew hasn't lost confidence in Papiss Cisse, despite his lack of goals.

Pardew is insistent the 27-year-old will have a crucial role to play for the remainder of the season, especially when Hatem Ben Arfa and Yohan Cabaye return from injuries in the New Year, and he has new recruits.

He admitted: "Papiss is a victim of our injury problems. Without Ben Arfa and Cabaye we have lacked quality in the last third and have not created a lot of moments for him to score.

"Hopefully we can create more moments for him and he will start scoring goals soon.

"I can confidently predict Papiss will score more goals in the second half of the season. In some respects playing right has helped his game and his ball retention.

"He needed to improve on that as a striker and I thought, even last year when he was scoring goals, that was a weakness in his game.

"He has improved that. It has taken the pressure off him to score goals that has helped a little bit. He's still had chances.

"When you look at him in training, we are a little bit perplexed as to why he's not scoring goals. But he is getting there, getting chances and that's the main thing."