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New official Newcastle United training update gives clues for Southampton availability

2 years ago
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The club have released a new Newcastle United training gallery featuring the NUFC players.

The images released, showing Newcastle United players training ahead of Thursday’s match against Southampton.

A bit of insight…potentially, into who may and may not be available for this Premier League away match.

Amongst the text that went with Tuesday’s photo gallery, Newcastle United included:

‘Matt Ritchie is back in training as Newcastle United prepare for Thursday night’s Premier League game at Southampton.

The 32-year-old – who was born on the South Coast, in Gosport, and started his career with Portsmouth – has been sidelined with a knee injury since the beginning of the year, but is now closing in on a return.’

The photos published by Newcastle United on Tuesday, featured the following 22 first team players from what we could see:

Miguel Almiron, Dan Burn, Karl Darlow, Martin Dubravka, Paul Dummett, Ryan Fraser, Dwight Gayle, Mark Gillespie, Bruno Guimaraes, Joelinton, Emil Krafth, Jamaal Lascelles, Sean Longstaff, Javier Manquillo, Jacob Murphy, Matt Ritchie, Allan Saint-Maximin, Fabian Schar, Jonjo Shelvey, Matt Targett, Joe Willock, Chris Wood

As for the Newcastle United players that we couldn’t see amongst all 56 photos in the official NUFC photo gallery:

Callum Wilson and Kieran Trippier are both out for the foreseeable.

No sign of  Federico Fernandez either in the club’s Newcastle United training shots. As always, there is a possibility that he just didn’t happen to feature in the photos published, or some other non-worrying explanation.

The Argentine defender was the one to drop out of the 20 man match day squad against Brighton, with Allan Saint-Maximin taking his place on the bench. However, nothing was said after the game as to and injury issues with Fernandez.

Obviously good to see Matt Ritchie back in group training this week but you can only assume he won’t be fit enough as yet to be considered for Southampton.

Also good to see Allan Saint-Maximin in these training images from earlier today.

He did of course come off the bench on Saturday against Brighton BUT on Sunday night he wasn’t present to accept the north east football writers player of the year at an awards dinner. A recorded message from ASM was played instead, with Amanda Staveley present to pick up the award on the Frenchman’s behalf. However, rather enigmatically, the NUFC minority shareholder said the reason Allan Saint-Maximin wasn’t in attendance, was because he’d had to ‘go abroad’, which sounded a little strange considering he’d only come back from getting treatment for his injury in Monaco last week and their being so many matches coming up in quick succession.

Anyway, he was there in training earlier today, so I’m assuming we will see him back in the starting eleven at Southampton, where he scored the winner exactly two years ago yesterday. Which was the last NUFC Premier League match with a full capacity crowd allowed, until 17 months later when covid restrictions had been lifted in time for the start of the 2021/22 PL season.

With Ritchie back training and soon to be available, it is good to see NUFC heading towards a more or less full squad available, with only seemingly Callum Wilson and Kieran Trippier set to be missing for a while longer.

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