He will cost less goals in the Championship than in the Premiership simply because the standard is not as high. Also, after seeing him play a number of times over the past 3 years I would say that he is easily good enough to get in any Championship team, some of the games I have watched he has played very, very well. Add to this the fact that Newcastle have probably been as big a joke as us in recent years with no decent manager to sort the players out.
What makes you think we will be in the Play-Offs anyway. Judging on the standards of this years we will need at least 11 new players this summer as well as a new manager!