'They will not be in the team': Arne Slot rules out two defenders for Newcastle United clash with stars spotted on crutches

Newcastle United need to recover from their Crystal Palace nightmare quickly because a whole new threat is set to invade their land on Wednesday night when Liverpool come to St James' Park for a 7:30pm kick-off live on Amazon Prime.

The Magpies will be hoping that Liverpool's dominance over them will end now that Jurgen Klopp has gone, but weirdly, they look an even better side under Arne Slot which means we're probably going to be in for a rough night on Wednesday.

However, Newcastle tend to turn it on against the bigger teams, especially at home, so anything can still happen.

Especially given that Liverpool seems to be having a mini-injury crisis which is affecting their defensive options.

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Arne Slot has a few defenders missing going into Wednesday's game

Arne Slot has ruled out both Ibrahima Konate and Connor Bradley as quoted by The Northern Echo, while Kostas Tsimikas was spotted on crutches at the weekend making him a big doubt too.

“They (Konate and Bradley) will both be out for a few weeks. I’ve said many times before, it is always difficult to judge how many weeks exactly because you can think in the beginning, ‘Oh, it’s probably going to be like this’, but in the end stage of the injury process it can always differ a bit.

“They will not be in the team this week, for sure. Both of them. Actually, I don’t think Kostas will be with us in the upcoming week as well. These players that we have available now, it’s more important now, even more than normal, for them to stay fit.”

Despite their absent players they still look strong

Unfortunately, his first-choice back-line are all available which means Slot can start the same defence that was part of Liverpool's 2-0 win over Manchester City on Sunday.

Trent Alexander Arnold, Virgil Van Dijk, Joe Gomez and Andy Robertson all came through Sunday's win unscathed with Slot withdrawing Alexander-Arnold early purely to ensure his fitness for Wednesday. Cheers, mate.

Their defensive options will be weak off the bench, so let's just go all Brutal Sports Football and wipe them all out in the first 10 minutes. I jest, obviously. Kind of.