Carroll in with a chance to play against Fulham.

Andy Carroll is yet to kick a competitive football for Newcastle United this year having suffered a thigh injury back in late December against Tottenham.

Losing Carroll has been a big blow, but the lads that have been fit have managed to put in a shift without their star striker playing and remain unbeaten in the league in 2011.

However, Carroll's injury, combined with other injuries and suspension, have left the squad looking very thin to say the least, so it will come as a welcome boost to hear that Carroll could well be in line to return to first team action against Fulham in just under two weeks time.

If that is that case, Carroll will have been out for nearly six weeks, which is a lot more than was anticipated at the start I'm sure. The injury has been on the shooting leg of Carroll according to Alan Pardew, which means that he has to be feeling 100% before being thrown back into action.

Speaking to The Journal, Alan Pardew had this to say about Carroll;

“We need one or two to come in, or one or two to come back and we think Andy Carroll looks close. He looks better this week so he has a good chance and could feature at Fulham which would be a massive bonus."

“There may be another body in over the next ten days, which would be a good lift for everybody."

After the effort the team have been putting in over the last few weeks it is perhaps understandable that they are jetting off to Portugal for a mid-season training camp in sunnier climbs. They have nearly two weeks off now, so why not rest up and take things easy in preparation for that final push towards the finishing line?

“We are going out to Portugal. We couldn’t train on Friday, it was a beautiful sunny day, but when you haven’t got a heated training ground, which Mike is going to address, you can’t train and we had to go indoors again."

“We will be away until Thursday to do some morning and afternoon stuff and hopefully show a couple of videos of the last five minutes of matches so we can show them how to see games out.”

Interesting to see that we could be getting a heated training pitch. To be honest it's something I had never even thought about. I just assumed that the facilities at Darsley Park would have included undersoil heating but apparently not. You learn something new everyday 😁

We'll have to wait and see who this new face is, if there is a new face. Talk of Stephen Ireland continues, although as yet there appears to be no breakthrough.