Eddie Howe and his Newcastle side will have been delighted with a hard-fought win over Brentford at the weekend, coming as it did after three successive Premier League defeats and ahead of their first Champions League match in over two decades against Milan.
A handful of his regular first-team stars have been off the boil for the majority of the 2023/24 English top-flight season, and whilst the manager appears ready to persevere with them, he does have a number of players in reserve that could be utilised.
The issue for Howe is that all of them – eight in total – are within a year of having their contracts up at the club, and there’s surely got to be good enough reasons why he hasn’t called upon the majority of them on a regular basis before now.
