BOSS Gary O’Neil will make late calls on the involvement of some of his first-team players for the Carabao Cup clash at Newcastle tomorrow, revealing a virus had spread through the squad. Cherries return to competitive action after a five-week break for the World Cup, making the trek north to face Eddie Howe’s Magpies. And exactly how the side will look is yet to be fully determined. Looking ahead to the return to action,
Gary O’Neil said: “I think we have a good chance of winning the game. We’ve done some real good work. We’ve had a tricky last 10 days, a real bad virus that went through the group. So we’ll have to make some last-minute calls on quite a few. Some of the boys have missed real, long spells with it – up to 10 days some of them have missed training, so it was a nasty one. I think we had eight to 10 missing at one point last week. And that has run over a little bit into this week. But we have enough available and I’m hopeful when we get there tomorrow things will look a little bit better and we can name a real, strong team.”
Away from the first team, Cherries’ development squad face Queens Park Rangers in the Premier League Cup this evening. But their squad looks set to be depleted with some players instead travelling with the first team to Newcastle.
Gary O Neil said: “The under-21s play in the Premier League Cup tonight, a big fixture for them. Hopefully we don’t have to take too many of their players off them because of the virus!”
