Yohan Cabaye still on Newcastle casualty list for Norwich game

• Playmaker will not recover in time from groin injury
• New signing Mathieu Débuchy will make debut

by Louise Taylor 4 months ago

There was more bad news for Newcastle United on Tuesday when it emerged that Yohan Cabaye is unlikely to have recovered from a groin injury in time to return to Alan Pardew's team for their vital Premier League game at Norwich on Saturday.

With the Magpies having lost nine of their last 11 League games, Pardew, admits the club's season is "on a knife edge" and had hoped his France playmaker would be fit for the weekend. Newcastle's manager is also likely to be without Steven Taylor, who is struggling with a hamstring injury, at Carrow Road, as well as the similarly hamstrung Hatem Ben Arfa and the suspended Shola Ameobi.

While Ben Arfa is scheduled to return to action next month, Cabaye and Taylor had originally been pencilled in to face Chris Hughton's team but Pardew is not prepared to gamble on rushing them back too soon. "It's no good if someone plays one game and then is out for another five weeks," he said.

However, Mathieu Débuchy, the France right-back newly signed from Lille, will make his debut in Norfolk where Papiss Cissé and Fabricio Coloccini – missing for Saturday's FA Cup defeat at Brighton – should be fit to start. Jonás Gutiérrez, recently sidelined by a knee injury, may be included in the squad.

One piece of brighter news for Pardew – who remains hopeful of signing the Marseille striker Loïc Rémy – is that Nigeria will not be invoking any Fifa disciplinary procedures against Shola Ameobi or Newcastle after he ignored a call-up for the Africa Cup of Nations.