Newcastle United star facing Premier League ban against Everton - on one condition

The Brazilian is just one booking away from a suspension after being shown four yellow cards in Newcastle’s opening six league matches. Joelinton was shown a yellow card during United’s 1-1 draw with Manchester City last weekend for a foul on Erling Haaland.

Premier League rules state that any player shown five bookings in the opening 19 league matches is banned for one match. So Joelinton must make it until matchday 20 without picking up another booking in order to avoid suspension.

Given his four bookings in six matches, avoiding a yellow card until the end of the year is highly unlikely for the combative midfielder.

“I’ve had many chats with Joe, on different things but that was one part of it,” Howe said about Joelinton’s yellow card situation. “We don’t want to miss him, losing him is always very difficult especially so early in the season, it feels too early to miss a player through suspension.

“It’s something he has to control but sometimes there can be a tackle where you’re a second late and you get a booking which you sort of accept. Maybe it’s the other ones that we need to eradicate from our game.

“You can’t have a destroyer, ball-winner, brilliant at second balls, duels, tackler - that force that he is in the middle of the pitch and not accept sometimes he is going to miss-time tackles and sometimes he is going to pick up yellow cards - you can’t have it both ways. Of course, we don’t want to lose him to suspension, we will try and help him a bit but as I say, you can’t have it both ways.”

A booking for Joelinton at Goodison Park on Saturday would rule him out for the Brighton & Hove Albion match at St James’ Park after the international break.

Last season, Newcastle saw Bruno Guimaraes, Anthony Gordon and Kieran Trippier all serve such suspensions.

Guimaraes was also one booking away from a two-match suspension during the second half of the campaign but managed to go 11 consecutive matches without a booking to avoid a ban.

This season, Dan Burn - who has been booked three times - must avoid another two bookings and Bruno Guimaraes must avoid three yellow cards in Newcastle’s next 13 matches having been booked twice already this season.

Lewis Hall, Sandro Tonali, Fabian Schar, Jacob Murphy, Lloyd Kelly and Sean Longstaffall have one booking each.

Newcastle’s 20th game of the Premier League season as things stand is away to Tottenham Hotspur on January 4, 2025.

During the 2022-23 season, Joelinton served a one-match ban for five bookings and a two-match ban for accumulating 10 yellow cards and now risks another ban this campaign.

There are still 13 games to play before the five-booking cut-off point. At that stage, the threshold moves to 10 bookings, 32 games and a two-match ban.

Any player shown 15 bookings over the course of the season is handed a three-match ban but no player has ever been cautioned that many times during a single Premier League campaign.