The Newcastle United manager Alan Pardew has said that he is hoping to include the former Manchester United winger Gabriel Obertan in the squad that will face Fulham.
Newcastle United come into the match struggling for form, will they have been nowhere near enough to reaching the same heights of last season when they finished in the fifth position. The French winger has struggled during his time at St James’s Park with fitness problems. He has been recently out with a toe injury that has kept him out of action for the last couple of weeks.
However, Pardew has said that he is extremely delighted to welcome such a quality player back to the squad that will face Fulham. This is going to be an extremely tough match for Newcastle given that Fulham have been resurgent since the arrival of Dimitar Berbatov from Manchester United. Newcastle have had their fair share of injury problems this season. A number of the first-team regulars like Gabriel Obertan and Fabricio Coloccini have suffered from injury problems this season, while the strikers like Demba Ba and Cisse have been unable to find the back of the net on a regular basis like last season. Hence, they will be hoping to get goals from the likes of Obertan.
“We’ve missed Obertan. He hasn’t had a lot of attention in this period, but we have missed his pace, we really have. It puts teams on the back foot and makes their left-back stay at home. He will be important to us now. I spoke to their manager beforehand. We were both nervous about the game because of where it fell in the calendar. We both have difficult league programmes coming up,” said the Newcastle manager. The north-east club are currently closer to the relegation zone due to their poor form.
