The left-back conunudrum.

With news of the full extent of Jose Enrique's injury yet to be confirmed, the whole left-back conundrum is kind of up in the air at the moment.

Or is it?

I would suggest that it's still a conundrum at the moment, both for this season and beyond. The fact is that Jose's injury, if severe enough to keep him out of action for the first team, highlights yet another area of weakness within our squad.

Right now as backup for Jose we have the option of playing Danny Simpson out of position on the left, playing James Perch out on the left, or playing young Shane Ferguson at left-back, although to be honest that would be my preferred choice of the three.

It's been said before and it will no doubt be said again, but we need another left-back, and if Jose does end up leaving the club then I would suggest that we need two. Ferguson may be a cracking prospect, but could you really rely on him for a run of ten games if injury was to set in? He's only a young lad, would he handle it? What if he then got injured?

I guess the ultimate aim is to have two first-team players for every position, but at this stage in the rebuilding process it is perhaps too much to ask. Thing is though, we've been saying this for years and it still hasn't been addressed, certainly not at left-back anyway. When was the last time you could say that we had a reliable back-up option?

An injury to one player has left us with this conundrum, and if we want to improve and be able to compete on more that just one front then we'll need to make sure that this kind of thing doesn't happen in the future. We could always try and get rid of some of the 53 central midfielder's that we seem to have collected which will hopefully allow us to balance the squad a little bit better, but this is Newcastle and we'll probably sign another couple for some unknown reason.

I don't know who to suggest that we could grab as a backup as, being honest, a half-decent left-back will probably not want to play second fiddle to anyone as they will know that they could probably get a game elsewhere, although if Jose does leave it will of course be less of a problem. Emilio Izaguirre has been mentioned, as has Cheikh M'Bengue, but they will come as starters and won't play second fiddle.

Young Ferguson's time will come, and whilst he has impressed in his limited appearances and claims to be ready, it would really show just how weak the squad was if we had to throw him in at the deep end.

Moan over!