But the former Crystal Palace striker has revealed another target: the number of points he feels Newcastle will need to ensure promotion to the Premier League at the end of the campaign.

Gayle has scored seven goals in his last four matches and now has 11 in 11 league games this term. When he arrived this summer, he announced that he wanted to "get to the 20 mark" - something no Magpies player has done since Alan Shearer in 2003/04.

And after Tuesday night's win at Oakwell, he told nufcTV: "I said at the start of the season I wanted to get 20 and that's my aim right now.

"I'm just helping out. I'm in good form at the moment but I'm sure there's going to be times when I'm not going to be scoring and other people are going to be scoring and helping out."We just need to pull through and get promotion."We're happy to be top but we've got a job to do and we need to aim for that 90, 92 points that we think is going to get promotion."We knew what they were about and they're a solid side. They make things hard for teams and they're always in the game. We knew we were going to have to take our chances and luckily we managed to do that and we got the three points in the end."

Gayle opened the scoring after 48 minutes when Barnsley failed to deal with a Matt Ritchie corner."I saw the ball rolling out and I saw the keeper sliding across so I knew if I hit it along the floor, he was going to pick it up," explained the Newcastle number nine. "So I thought I'd try to dink it over him and luckily it worked and we got the first goal."

On his and United's second of the night, Gayle added: "It was a great ball from Matty Ritchie to play me in and luckily when I got to it, it's gone in. The 2-0 helped us to relax a bit more and took the pressure off the final ten minutes for us."It's just fantastic to be playing in front of all the quality players we've got and I'm relishing it."