Newcastle United’s injuries are clearing up.
Posted on March 16th, 2010 | 190 Comments |
Arguably the most notable of those injuries to clear up is Jose Enrique. The Spanish left back has been out for five weeks, and had his comeback against Barnsley two weeks ago cut short with a slight recurrance of his hamstring injury. He was named on the bench against Middlesbrough although manager Chris Hughton decided not to risk playing the defender and decided a couple of days extra rest would be better than risking losing Enrique for a longer period of time.
The Spaniard is raring to go for the title run in and firmly believes his injury problems are behind him, something we all hope is true such has been his influence this season. Speaking to The Chronicle of his injury, Enrique had this to say:
“I’m OK, and I want to play all the games now. The most important thing is we get back to the Premier League.”
“I travelled to Middlesbrough, but the manager put Danny Simpson and Ryan Taylor in there at full-back – I think he wanted to protect me.”
Also in line for a comback is wing wizard Wayne Routledge, again another player who was named on the bench at Middlesbrough but was not risked and hopefully the couple of days extra training will see the player pushing for a start after his injury lay-off with a calf problem. With Wayne in the team Newcastle look much more balanced and possess an attacking threat from both the right wing and left wing aswell as an injection of pace and a trick or two he can bring to the team.
Both Alan Smith and Fabricio Coloccini have picked up niggling knocks and continue to be assesed by the Newcastle United medical team. I guess we will just have to wait and see if they are back fit for the Scunthorpe United game on Wednesday evening.
Moving on to some of our longer term injuries, Joey Barton steps up his return from a long term foot injury in a reserve team game against Hartlepool tonight. Joey featured for 45 minutes in a ‘behind closed doors’ friendly against Hibernian a week ago and the controversial midfielder is itching for a first team return after five months of injury hell.
“I just want to focus on playing football now” said Barton.
“The team have done a great job this season, and so have the staff – and I just want to do the business on the pitch again.”
Is the midfielder turning over a new leaf? Who knows.
Another long term absentee, Shola Ameobi, will return to training on Thursday. The striker has had continuous injury problems this season, with a foot injury keeping him out for three months and now a hamstring injury which has seen him ruled out since the start of February.
That will only leave Steven Taylor and Mike Williamson as longer term absentees. The addition of players returning from injury for the season finale can only be a good thing for the squad as a whole and can hopefully add a bit of competition for places in the starting line-up, hopefully it will give manager Chris Hughton a selection headache.
I’m sure it will be a nice headache though.
NUFCBlog Author: toonsy
toonsy has written 643 articles on this blog.
Slightly harsh picture :)