David Wagner Newcastle press conference “We’ve lost three midfielders in a week, not what we wanted”
David Wagner finds himself in the relegation zone with Huddersfield less than two weeks before Christmas.
The Terriers boss met the media on Friday lunchtime ahead of Saturday’s game and declared ‘We will try everything to make sure we have the same points as Newcastle United after the game on Saturday.’
Huddersfield need a win to go level on 13 points with 15th placed Newcastle, whilst the big carrot for Rafa Benitez is that he could put six points between NUFC and the relegation zone with a victory and other results going their way.
On the injury front it has been a tough couple of weeks for David Wagner, midfielder Abdelhamid Sabiri was already ruled out until next February following an operation to repair his broken collarbone which he picked up against Bournemouth two games ago.
Then after Arsenal last weekend, it was announced that their best player Aaron Mooy is also out until sometime next year.
Whilst today, the Huddersfield boss revealed that Danny Williams was now out for 10 weeks as well.
David Wagner scarcely able to believe his bad luck: ‘We’ve lost three midfielders in a week, not what we wanted.’
This is on top of captain Tommy Smith already being ruled out.
Though the Huddersfield boss is optimistic that record signing Terence Kongolo and Jonathan Hogg will have recovered from knocks.
David Wagner pre-Newcastle press conference:
“Jonathan Hogg and Terence Kongolo look fine and are back in training.
“Danny Williams got a knee injury in training. We expect him to be out for 10 weeks.
“We’ve lost three midfielders in a week, not what we wanted, but we will deal with it.
We’ve always said we will need everyone in our squad.
“Now other players have their opportunity to show their talent.
“With our injury problems it makes even more sense that we have our 12th man behind us.
“I’m so happy we are at home, with our supporters, we need them to create an atmosphere to help us even more.
“I have complete confidence they will do that.
“After our games people are always saying a good performance and not the result we’ve deserved.
“We need to change that.
“The good thing for us is that we had a full squad healthy over the last month, so everyone has the fitness and a good idea of how we want to play.
“(21 year old) Juninho Bacuna played well against Arsenal. He was good and calm on the ball, aggressive and we were happy.
“He has all the qualities and the spirit, he just needs to become more consistent on the pitch.
“We will try everything to make sure we have the same points as Newcastle United after the game on Saturday.
“We have to make sure we find the areas to cause them problems and that we limit their strengths.
“Newcastle have a lot of quality and a lot of experience, but they are in our area of the table.
“Hopefully we can come closer to them after the game Saturday.”
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