Eddie Howe has confirmed that Newcastle United are still having to cope without injured midfield duo Joelinton and Joe Willock ahead of Sunday's Premier League clash at Sheffield United.
Joelinton started each of the Magpies' first four Premier League games of the new season, but he has since missed the last two matches against Brentford in the top flight and AC Milan in the Champions League due to a knee injury.
Willock, meanwhile, is yet to play for Newcastle this season due to an Achilles problem picked up in the final few weeks of last season.
Sunday's trip to Bramhall Lane will come too soon for both players, and Howe has provided an update regarding when he expected the pair to return to first-team action.
Speaking at a press conference on Friday, Howe said: "We're still missing Joelinton and Joe Willock in midfield. Apart from that, we're pretty good.
"We hope with Joelinton that he could possibly be back sooner, but with Joe Willock it will definitely be after the international break (in mid-October)."
Newcastle have now entered a hectic fixture schedule that is testing them to juggle Premier League duties with Champions League and EFL Cup fixtures.
Sunday's clash at Sheffield United will be followed three days later with an EFL Cup third-round meeting with Manchester City at St James' Park, before two Premier League games against Burnley and West Ham United take place either side of a Champions League battle with Paris Saint-Germain.
Discussing how he plans to manage his squad during this busy period, Howe said: "We are going to have to rotate the squad. We're not going to be able to play the same eleven players every week. We don't want to make, if we can't help it, wholesale changes to the team in any one game.
"I don't think that is going to do our rhythm any good and help us. Tweaks, as we're going along, hopefully then the team will become unaffected and we manage to keep everyone in the team fresh."
On facing Sheffield United, the Newcastle boss added: "(We're expecting) a difficult game. I think Bramall Lane is a very tough place to go, anytime of the year. They're a good team, a direct team who will ask us questions physically. They've got good athleticism in their team, counter-attacking, and they're very strong from set plays.
"They've got lots of areas to their team that can hurt us if we're not right so I think the big challenge for us is to mentally approach the game as we did the Brentford match where we were spot on in our mindset and importance of the game, responding really well with maybe not a magnificent display but doing enough to get the job done.
"We're going to have to get all the basics right if we're going to compete in this game."
After beating Brentford 1-0 on home soil last weekend, Newcastle will be looking to claim back-to-back Premier League wins and climb into the top half of the table with a victory over Sheffield United, who are still searching for their first win since securing promotion to the top flight. body check tags ::
