Leicester City boss Dean Smith admits he has a couple of injury doubts for Monday evening’s trip to St James’ Park, with Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall and Kelechi Iheanacho potentially set to miss out depending on how they respond to the weekend’s training.
Smith said at his Thursday press conference that forward Iheanacho had been put ‘on fast-forward’ to try and accelerate his recovery given the parlous position his side are in towards the bottom of the table.
Leicester sit second-bottom and desperately need to get something against Newcastle United and in their final-day clash at home to West Ham to save themselves from the drop to the Championship.
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While Iheanacho had at least trained at the time Smith gave his update, midfielder Dewsbury-Hall was yet to take back to the training pitch in an attempt to follow Jonny Evans back into action.
Having missed most of the season with a calf injury, the experienced centre-back and Foxes skipper made his first Premier League start since October last Monday as he turned out for the three-goal defeat at home to Liverpool.
Defender Caglar Soyuncu will continue to miss out with a hamstring injury, while goalkeeper Danny Ward has a dislocated finger – though he lost his place in the starting line-up to Daniel Iversen in March in any case. Centre-back Jannik Vestergaard is out for the season with a calf injury while full-back James Justin was not registered to Leicester’s 25-man Premier League squad and is thus ineligible.
Eddie Howe’s side will be looking to consolidate their hold on third place with a victory over Leicester on Monday evening.
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