Andy Carroll offers to play at centre-back as injury crisis deepens | OneFootball

Steve Bruce has revealed that Andy Carroll has volunteered to play at centre-back for Monday’s game against Brighton.

Newcastle are in the midst of an injury crisis, with four of the club’s central defenders all missing for tonight’s match.

Bruce has Fabian Schär, Jamaal Lascelles, Ciaran Clark and Florian Lejeune out injured but in one if the lighter moments of a gloomy press conference the manager said: “He’s OK, he could play. Andy reminded me that he has played centre-half before!

“It was a long, long time ago, I think he started as a left-back.

“So Andy looks OK for Monday.”

But Bruce did eventually bemoan their terrible luck with injuries post-lockdown.

“Most people accept you’re going to have one or two or three, but seven or eight is a huge number.

“But we have to get on with it.

“We knew there were going to be difficulties ahead, but not to this severity.

“We’ve had probably too many, so we will look and I will ask the question: ‘Is there anything we can do to improve?’

“We’ve had far too many, especially when we’re playing Saturday, Tuesday, Saturday – we can’t seem to cope.

“Schar’s away to see a specialist – we expect him to have an operation. Florian Lejeune, Isaac Hayden, Sean Longstaff, Paul Dummett, Ciaran Clark, Jamaal Lascelles, Allan Saint-Maximin are all big doubts.”