According to an exclusive from The Telegraph, Newcastle United now fear TEN players have COVID-19 and will ask the Premier League to postpone Friday’s trip to Aston Villa.
With the Benton training base shut down and unlikely to reopen until Wednesday at the earliest as cases within the club continue to rise, Luke Edwards reveals that NUFC are now speaking to top flight chiefs to determine whether we have the grounds to cancel this week’s clash at Villa Park.
It was initially confirmed last Thursday by Steve Bruce that three players and one member of staff had either tested positive or been forced to self-isolate, but those numbers have only increased over the past few days, with two more contracting the virus over the weekend and even more cases reported today – taking the total to 10 players and a few members of staff.
The Telegraph report that it ‘remains unclear’ whether the Premier League will allow the game to be postponed – as Newcastle may, in theory, be able to field a team on Friday – however the amount of players set to miss out, travel concerns and complicated accommodation arrangements ahead of our trip to Birmingham mean our case must be taken seriously and dealt with safely.
Not only that, we haven’t trained all week and look unlikely to do so anytime soon now more and more are testing positive and in self-isolation. After all, cases keep going up and the spread is anything but under control, making the sharing of a dressing room and mixing with Aston Villa’s squad potentially unsafe and irresponsible.
Put it this way, our preparations for Friday night’s game couldn’t have gone much worse should it somehow go ahead!
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