Newcastle United head coach Steve Bruce has revealed that Magpies captain Jamaal Lascelles’ injury against Bournemouth had him uttering an expletive.
The 26-year-old went down with a serious problem in the 2-1 win over the Cherries, but fears that he had fractured his tibia proved unfounded, with ligament damage the prognosis.
Bruce has lifted the lid on his thoughts at the time: “That sounds terrible because it’s a fracture,” he said, as per The Chronicle. “But I honestly thought the way his knee was that he had done his cruciates – we all thought ****, is it ligaments?
“But he’s got a crack on the outside of his knee. So we hope he’ll be back within a month to six weeks.”
OPINION
There were definite concerns surrounding Lascelles when he went down with the injury a couple of weeks ago. He was clearly in some pain on the pitch and so the fans were understandably worried about the skipper. A tibia fracture would have been absolutely devastating and likely would have ended the player’s season. Fortunately, though, it turned out to ‘only’ be ‘a crack on the outside of his knee’ Obviously he’s still going to miss some game time, a month to six weeks as Bruce says, but it could have been a hell of a lot worse. However, the positive thing is that the injury came in a position where the Magpies are incredibly well stocked. Bruce has Fabian Schar, Federico Fernandez, Ciaran Clark, Paul Dummett and the returning Florian Lejeune at the heart of the defence, and so they shouldn’t fare too badly without their captain, although the loss of his leadership will be a big blow.
