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Why Lascelles injury isn’t a huge blow

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Newcastle United will be without their club captain Jamaal Lascelles for the majority of their relegation run-in, starting with the relegation six pointer against Burnley on Sunday.

Lastelles has suffered a stress fracture to his foot and as such could be out set for a spell on the sidelines for as long as eight weeks.

The club captain has put on record his desire to back in time to help his club in the final two games of the season. The final two see United play Sheffield United and Fulham in what could be absolutely pivotal.

Of course, it is a shame that Lascelles will be missing and you do worry about the impact of losing the leadership qualities could be on the team but there are many reasons why this blow isn’t as devastating as it sounds.

Firstly, Bruce confirmed that Ciaran Clark and Federico Fernandez are both available for the trip to Turf Moor, a timely boost to the defensive ranks.

Clark and Fernandez are about as reliable as it gets when it comes to centre halves and neither are likely to let the side down. With the Argentine’s potential rustiness being the only factor that may come into play.

Furthermore, Paul Dummett is arguably one of our better defenders are the recognised left back is more than capable of slotting into the heart of the defence without giving toon fans too many worries.

Options are there for United and whilst many might still point to the decision to loan out Florian Lejeune as daft (it is daft), we have enough numbers in the area to deal with this latest blow.

This situation does not compare to how short we were left when losing Miguel Almiron, Callum Wilson and Allan Saint-Maximin to injury at the same time.

Another point is that it may force Bruce’s hand to return to a back four in favour of a five. Lascelles is always the man in the middle of a three and because of the amount of left footed centre backs that we have in the squad, any three would surely be disjointed.

Ok, the back five worked pretty well against Spurs but it is not the way to go against Burnley. We have to play a system that gets the best out of our attacking flair players and that is definitely not the back five.

We should return to playing our brilliant front three and weirdly the injury to our skipper could make this more likely.

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