23 Newcastle United players back at training ground on first day of pre-season preparations | OneFootball

It was the first day of pre-season on Friday, as we moved into July it saw Eddie Howe and the Newcastle United players return to the training ground.

With the new season kicking off in only five weeks time, a congested season with a World Cup in the middle, means there has never been a more important time to get preparations right and hit the new season running.

Next Saturday (9 July) sees Newcastle United already playing their first pre-season friendly, behind closed doors against Gateshead.

There then follows a week away in Austria and another couple of friendlies included in that trip, playing 1860 Munich (Friday 15 July) and Mainz (Monday 18 July).

With yesterday’s return to the training ground for the Newcastle United players, the club released a gallery of images, with this accompanying text:

‘The likes of Bruno Guimarães, Fabian Schär, Kieran Trippier and new signing Nick Pope have been given a few extra days for their summer break after representing their countries, but Joelinton, Jonjo Shelvey, Joe Willock and Matt Targett were among the players bouncing back to Benton ready to get to work.

In the morning, the players were split into groups for testing both indoors and outdoors before the afternoon saw the group head onto the training pitches under the watchful eye of Howe and his staff.’

Looking through the gallery of images and other photos / video released by the club on social media, we spotted the following 23 Newcastle United players there on the first day of pre-season:

Martin Dubravka, Mark Gillespie

Kell Watts, Dan Burn, Jamaal Lascelles, Matt Targett, Paul Dummett, Federico Fernandez, Jamal Lewis

Joe Willock, Jonjo Shelvey, Joelinton, Matty Longstaff, Sean Longstaff,

Allan Saint-Maximin, Matt Ritchie, Ryan Fraser, Jacob Murphy

Callum Wilson

As well as those 19 first team squad players, there were four from last season’s Under 23 group also pictured, bringing the total up to 23. These were Isaac Westendorf, Joe Oliver, Lucas De Bolle and Jay Turner-Cooke.

The ten internationals we assume that have been allowed the extra time off:

Chris Wood, Kieran Trippier, Sven Botman, Nick Pope, Bruno Guimaraes, Fabian Schar, Jeff Hendrick, Emil Krafth, Elliot Anderson, Miguel Almiron

Then this quartet who we also couldn’t see in any of the official photos etc:

Ciaran Clark, Javier Manquillo, Karl Darlow, Dwight Gayle

We are now on day 23 of the 84 days of the transfer window, so plenty of time for Newcastle United players to head in and out of the club, but a hectic time ahead as no doubt Eddie Howe and everybody else at the club will want as much as possible sorted ahead of the new season.

That last quartet who couldn’t be seen (at least by us!) in any of the official releases, maybe no coincidence, as very likely those four Newcastle United players will be finding new clubs.

The first big indication of who will be in (and out) of Eddie Howe’s thoughts for the new season, will be the Newcastle United players who fly out to Austria. That will be in no more than a week and a half’s time, so hopefully the head coach will have as many of his intended NUFC first team squad for next season, on that plane.

The likes of Sven Botman