Toon face a Palace hit by injury plague

NEWCASTLE United will face up to a Crystal Palace squad which is ravaged by injuries, with Roy Hodgson admitting he hasn’t known anything like it for decades.

The 70-year-old Palace manager’s injury list includes Bakary Sako, who hurt his knee at West Ham in midweek, plus Scott Dann, Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Jason Puncheon, Connor Wickham and Jeffrey Schlupp.

Palace signed Norwegian international Alexander Sorloth on deadline day to ease their selection issues, but speaking ahead of tomorrow’s game with Newcastle, the former England boss told the BBC: “I have to go back to my time in Switzerland with Neuchatel and we lost four players that season.

“Three of them with cruciate injuries and one to a very bad shoulder injury.

“That’s pretty unusual to see four injuries like that, and we’re not too far away from that here.

“We’ve not had Benteke for a long period with medial knee injuries, we’ve lost Jeffrey Schlupp with medial injuries and we might be losing Bakary Sako as well as Puncheon and Dann.

“These are injuries that have all come about in games, in tackles or twisting and turning.

“In some ways it’s easier to accept that because with the muscle injuries you tend to blame yourself.

“You wonder if we’ve done something and not protected their muscles well enough but the trauma injuries are something you can’t do.

“The lads are doing well to battle through that because we have a limited squad of players.”