Newcastle United assessing loan deals in January as Eddie Howe highlights training ground issue

During the World Cup break, the Newcastle head coach has been keen to involve several players from the club’s academy set-up. Youngsters Alex Murphy, Dylan Stephenson, Joe White, Jay Turner-Cooke and Lewis Miley all travelled with the first-team squad to Saudi Arabia for a warm weather training camp earlier this month.

All five players came off the bench during United's 5-0 friendly win over Al Hilal in Riyadh. Miley, Turner-Cooke and Stephenson also featured in the 2-1 friendly win over Rayo Vallecano at St James's Park.

The Under-21s players have also trained with the first-team at Darsley Park during the break, taking part in an intra-squad friendly last Friday. Goalkeeper Max Thompson has also trained with the first-team in recent weeks.

But with Newcastle now returning to competitive action and welcoming senior players back from injury as well as the World Cup, normal service is set to resume. Still, Howe was full of praise for the young players who helped bolster his depleted squad during the break.

“It's important and they've played a big part in our training and those players involved have done very well,” Howe told The Gazette. “Now the challenge for me is when we get the full bodies back [of first team players], you can't train with 30, 35 players, it's impossible so we'll have to return to our normal training group. “But those players have done their chances of future involvement with us no harm."

And with the January transfer window just around the corner, Newcastle will continue to assess the young players with the view to loaning them out for the second part of the campaign.

Howe added: “Now we'll assess them on their own situation and on an individual basis to see whether there's any players who then go out on loan or they stay with us.”

The Magpies saw plenty of success with Elliot Anderson’s loan move to Bristol Rovers last season and could be tempted to loan several young players out next month. Newcastle currently have two Under-21s players out on loan with Dan Langley at Gateshead and Lucas de Bolle at Hamilton Academical.

Young first-team players Kelland Watts and Matty Longstaff are on loan at Peterborough United and Colchester United respectively until January. Those deals could still be extended until the end of the season.

Club captain Jamaal Lascelles has been working alongside the young players over the past month and believes some of them have ‘bright futures' ahead.

“[Playing with the first-team] must be nice for them,” Lascelles said. “I think about when I was young just being around first team players.

"These lads conduct themselves really well and there's some good players in there as well. There was an in house game and I think most of them played and mixed in with the first team lads.

"Some of them have got bright futures and they just have to keep their heads down and keep working to where they want to be.”