Newcastle injury crisis deepens as Fulham win papers over cracks despite Wissa, Miley positives | OneFootball

Newcastle United couldn’t get knocked out of the Carabao Cup just days after an embarrassing display against Sunderland. They just couldn’t.

Ultimately, it was a positive result as they overcame Fulham 2-1 on Wednesday night to continue the defence of their Carabao crown, but their performance doesn’t exactly lift expectations for the second half of the season.

Reaching the semi-final of the competition was more important than a wonderful performance, but the latter still felt necessary after such a pathetic showing in Sunday’s Wear-Tyne derby.

Newcastle players vowed to ‘make things right’ after being bullied and beaten by their greatest rivals, and that was never possible. Beating a non-rival in a different competition couldn’t undo their derby wrongs. It just wasn’t possible. But what the Magpies can do is improve and give supporters hope that success is coming in 2026.

Beating Fulham was the first of many steps to convince supporters of that, and with pressure mounting on Eddie Howe, it felt like a massive fixture, even if it was impossible to ‘make things right’ after Sunday.

Let’s get the negatives out of the way, shall we?

Well… the performance wasn’t very good. The same issues we’ve seen from Newcastle all season were there. The defending for Sasa Lukic’s goal was abysmal, and they benefited from some poor Benjamin Lecomte goalkeeping for the opening goal.

Individually, summer signing Jacob Ramsey was again pretty uninvolved. For £39million, we expect a lot more. Jacob Murphy had a chance to solidify his position ahead of Anthony Elanga but didn’t. Meanwhile, Joe Willock failed to take his chance, and Harvey Barnes’ purple patch is absolutely over, if we didn’t know that already.

The worst part of the night was undoubtedly the latest injury to Tino Livramento.

Howe was forced to play midfielder Lewis Miley at right-back and Livramento on the left after Lewis Hall sustained a hamstring injury before the game. It has quickly become a very bleak absentee list for Newcastle after Dan Burn suffered a punctured lung and broken rib against Sunderland.

We might be entering crisis territory for Newcastle, considering it’s players in the same position catching the injury bug. Sven Botman can’t stay fit, Kieran Trippier is still out, and Alex Murphy coming on against Fulham will worry the St James’ Park faithful. There’s a decent chance Howe’s starting full-backs against Chelsea on Saturday are Murphy and Miley. That is far from ideal. Far, far from ideal.

The extent of Livramento’s injury is unknown, but it doesn’t look good. The image of him rubbing the knee with a big ACL surgery scar was terrifying and will have everyone fearing the worst.

Bleak, we know. But there were some positives.

Newcastle won. Yes, they won a game of football. That is probably the biggest positive you can hope for from any match. Miley’s winner came in the 92nd minute, marking the second time this season that Newcastle beat Fulham 2-1 courtesy of a 90-plus-minute goal. Bruno Guimaraes found the winner in the 90th minute in the Premier League after Lukic equalised. Spooky, right?

Newcastle have a torrid injury-time record this season, dropping points left, right and centre in the Premier League thanks to conceding late on. Arsenal, Spurs and Liverpool have all benefited at St James’ Park, yet it’s poor ol’ Fulham who are on the receiving end of a late winner in the north-east. Typical!

Miley was the best player on the park, which will soften Howe’s full-back woes. He might be a very decent option there moving forward, though the long-term starters should be Livramento and Hall.

His performance and goal will please Newcastle fans, but their favourite goal of the night would have been Yoane Wissa’s after only 10 minutes.

It was Wissa’s first goal for the club after taking four months to make his debut. His instinctive finish was assisted by a poor Lecomte clearance, but he showed excellent anticipation and didn’t get his feet muddled when others might have.

He will hopefully kick on and be enabled to do so after deciding not to represent DR Congo at the Africa Cup of Nations – probably feeling like he owes Newcastle after suffering a long-term injury playing on a shambles of a pitch for his country just after joining from Brentford. We do expect Newcastle’s new No.9 to do that famous shirt justice.

Overall, there were more positives than negatives. But the negatives might just about outweigh the positives. Wednesday night’s result ensures Newcastle haven’t entered crisis territory on the pitch, but off the pitch, there remains uncertainty about Howe’s position due to the overall performance against Fulham, while the injury list continues to grow as defenders drop like flies.