Rafa without Lascelles for latest Newcastle ‘final’

during the Premier League match between Newcastle United and Wolverhampton Wanderers at St. James Park on December 9, 2018 in Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom.

Newcastle skipper Jamaal Lascelles is out of Saturday’s Premier League trip to Bournemouth with a knee injury.

Lascelles failed to re-appear after the break in last weekend’s 3-2 fightback victory over Everton at St James’ Park and joins keeper Rob Elliot and midfielder Sean Longstaff on the sidelines, although fellow central defender Ciaran Clark is fit to resume.

Manager Rafael Benitez said: “We had Longstaff and Elliot, now we have Lascelles, who is still feeling a little bit his knee, so we will not take any risks. We’ll wait two or three days to see how he reacts.

“But Clark is available, so we lose one, but at least we have another one.”

The Magpies edged to within four points of Benitez’s survival target of 38 with the win over the Toffees, but the Spaniard insists they cannot relax just yet after seeing them go down in their last away game at West Ham.

He said: “You can see that the confidence is high, but again I have told them, we have to be careful.

“Still the job is not done, so we have to keep working hard, we need to approach every game like a final, and if we do that and we don’t make the mistakes that we did against West Ham, we can compete against anyone.”