Hull City and Newcastle United both have a free week to recuperate after the latest round of Premier League fixtures, and will meet at St James' Park on Saturday afternoon.
Newcastle have already booked their place in the fourth round of the Carabao Cup but were given a harsh reminder that evolving on the hoof can be difficult when they were thrashed by Leeds United on Monday.
The Magpies next opponents will be unbeaten Hull, who also played their third round Carabao Cup tie last week but ended up on the wrong side of a 1-0 result against Sunderland.
Newcastle United injury news reveals triple blow
The Tigers have drawn their last two league matches against Aston Villa and Chelsea but head into the weekend fixtures still undefeated in the Premier League.
It's clear that they're going to take some beating and Newcastle's latest injury update could make it even more challenging as Matthias Jaissle plots a first league win in three games.
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Spanish midfielder Nico Gonzalez was substituted in the middle of the first half at Elland Road but the new Newcastle boss appears to be hopeful that it will prove a precautionary measure after a blow to the head.
"With Nico, as a manager and we as a club, we have the responsibility if he has that knock out feeling as we all saw," Jaissle said.
"We have to be responsible to take him off the pitch even though he looked fine then. But there are rules for that occasion. Independent of how important it is to win a match, we are all human beings, and we take that seriously to take him off the pitch."
Winger Anthony Elanga's prognosis is less positive. The Sweden international suffered an injury in between matches and there are fears he could be out of action for some time.
"The injury doesn't look good. We need to investigate how serious it is. Elanga is struggling with injury but at the moment it does not look that good," said Jaissle.
Newcastle are also expecting to be without Jacob Ramsey on Saturday after the 25-year-old sustained a thigh injury before Monday's match.
"The simple way to explain that is he felt his thigh in the warm-up so he was not able to play tonight," Jaissle added. "It does not look good for the weekend at the moment."
Gonzalez, Elanga and Ramsey are new additions to an injury list that also includes long-term absentees Joelinton, Dan Burn and William Osula.
