With our new season just a day away and the team news in from Rafa Benitez’s press conference today, we’ve looked at the Newcastle United side that could be set to take on Spurs at St James’ Park tomorrow.
Dubravka and Diame are fit despite being injury concerns following last weekend’s friendly with Augsburg and Muto is available, however the only absentee (aside from the obvious Florian Lejeune) will be new boy Federico Fernandez – with Rafa confirming that his late arrival at the club will see tomorrow come too soon for him
With all this, the new arrivals and our pre-season performances in mind, here’s the team we think think will start tomorrow:
(4-2-3-1) – Dubravka – Yedlin, Lascelles, Clark, Dummett – Diame, Shelvey – Ritchie, Perez, Kenedy – Rondon.
Clark looks set to get the nod next to Lascelles in Lejeune’s absence – for now at least. He’s played most of pre-season, Schar won’t be thrown in at the deep end just yet and Fernandez is out.
Shelvey and Diame will almost certainly keep Ki out of the side – although I expect the South Korean to play some part.
The big question is who will play up top. Joselu has seen far more minutes of pre-season than Rondon and Muto, however Lascelles admitted just a few days ago that the Venezuelan was looking ‘really good’ in training.
We could do with a boost before the game and Rafa will know that handing Rondon his debut could give us exactly that – not forgetting that Joselu looked pretty woeful in our last outing at St James’ Park against Augsburg.
What team do you see starting tomorrow folks?
(Fancy writing for us? Send any articles/ideas over to us at [email protected] & we’ll get back to you!)
