Newcastle handed double injury boost and Lewis Miley blow ahead of 2024/25 season

Lewis Miley looks set to miss the opening month of the Premier League season after suffered a broken bone in his foot, but there is some good news to share on Sven Botman and Joe Willock.

As reported by The Mail's Craig Hope, Miley will have surgery in London next week after a 'freak incident' in training did metatarsal damage. He's expected to miss the next 12 weeks, ruling him out of pre-season and at least the first month of our opening fixtures against Southampton, Bournemouth, Spurs and Wolves.

However, in better news, Sven Botman is ahead of schedule, back on the grass doing some light work  and making positive strides on his comeback from ACL surgery, as revealed first by Joe Bland.

The Dutchman hasn't played since a 3-2 defeat to Chelsea in March and went under the knife four months ago. His initial target was to be back playing at the start of 2025, but there's some hope he could feature before the year is out.

As for Joe Willock, the 24-year-old suffered from a lack of pre-season this time last year after a serious hamstring injury in May 2023, but he's making good progress from an Achilles injury that cut his 2023/24 campaign short in April and is expected to be fine for our tour of Japan later this month.

Back to Miley, it's a concern that the 18-year-old has now suffered two lengthy injuries so early into his career. A back injury ended his season in March and now he's suffered a freak issue in his foot, so we'll have to hope surgery goes well and the Geordie midfielder makes a full recovery.

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