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Ben Arfa In Newcastle Setback

11 years ago
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Whilst Spurs on Saturday was always looking too early for Hatem Ben Arfa’s return from injury, Alan Pardew had hoped to have him available for this month’s Europa League matches but now his return has had a setback.

The manager has revealed the player has been ill and missed the best part of a week of training;

“He (Ben Arfa) has been sick and missed four or five days on the training ground.

He has a good chance of being available for Southampton but is doubtful for the European games which we initially thought he would be involved in.

Hatem gives us something we don’t have elsewhere in the squad and you can’t get away from it. He can ghost past people and his workrate has improved dramatically so he has become a major player for us.

I’m really forward to his return”.

It just shows though what a couple of wins and the semblance of a bit of a squad does for the spirits because on hearing about this Ben Arfa setback I felt quite relaxed.

Which most definitely wouldn’t have been the case if we’d only scraped a point or worse in those two matches and were still a Sissoko and Gouffran short in the squad.

Which is obviously just as it should be because you can’t rely on everybody being fit.

The main thing of course is that Hatem comes back fully fit and without any major setback, then he can have real influence on the run in.

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