Nightmare at Newcastle – Howe attempts to explain as injury crisis goes from bad to worse,he might not play again…

Following three more Mags’ forced exits in Saturday’s 4-3 victory against West Ham, Eddie Howe has been speaking about Newcastle United’s persistent injury crisis.

In just one week, Jamaal Lascelles became the second player to be scheduled for ACL surgery; he and Sven Botman will both miss “six to nine months”; Miguel Almiron and Tino Livramento were also sidelined. Lewis Miley was also injured during the international break, and it is anticipated that Miggy will be out for at least two to three weeks.

Howe acknowledges that injuries and exhaustion may occasionally result from our “high-intensity style” and the physically demanding nature of our play, but he maintains that a large portion of our issues this season have been the result of pure poor luck.

We’ve sometimes rushed players back and taken risks – Botman clearly wasn’t right and it’s crazy that Lascelles tried to run off a serious knee injury – but we’ve also had so many freak injuries. Two dislocated shoulders (Pope and Murphy), three back injuries (Burn, Anderson and Miley) largely from heavy falls, Barnes’ off-the-ball toe injury at Sheffield United and Wilson damaging his pectoral muscle after a fight for the ball at Forest.

Speaking about the latest injuries, Howe said – “I always think there’s no such thing as bad luck. I think you create your own luck. We play a really high-intensity style and a real physical game. Naturally, if we didn’t play that style and played a different way, the physical cost on our players would be less.

“But when you look at some of the injuries we’ve had this year, and we’ve analysed and re-analysed them, then for a lot of them, you can’t put them into any category other than bad luck, even though I don’t really believe in it.

“I’ve had some injuries, and this one has been quite peculiar. That has been the situation with some of the injuries we’ve had even on Saturday.

“I understand that certain players have been away on international duty, which adds to their workload, and I believe you could see that some of West Ham’s players were also struggling. Week by week, the game is undoubtedly becoming faster.