Santon set for quick return?

Newcastle have been boosted with the news that Davide Santon's knee injury might not turn out to be as bas as was first feared.

Alan Pardew revealed in the Sunday Sun that the Italian U21 international could even be in line to make his debut against Blackburn next weekend.

It was feared that Davide Santon would need to undergo an operation to "clean out" his knee joint, although perhaps operation is not the appropriate way of putting. The procedure would have involved keyhole surgery which would have meant that the recovery time would have been significantly less compared to a conventional operation.

Fingers crossed neither scenario will have to be used now that Santon has had fluid drained from his knee leaving Pardew feeling optimistic over the fitness of the young Italian.

“He’s had fluid taken from his knee and we think, fingers crossed, that will be OK. Maybe he’ll be available for next weekend,” Pardew told the Sunday Sun.

“If that doesn’t cure the problem we think he’ll probably have an operation in there where we just go in and tidy it up. It’s not a cartilage, just a little bit of scar tissue.”

I don't know why I'm hopeful as, quite frankly, Newcastle have a shocking record of player injuries. Maybe it's that previous that is making me feel ultra cynical about this supposed positive injury news?

I fully believe that having fluid on the knee is not a good thing. It got there somehow so if you don't remove the cause of it then it will just come back. I'm not a doctor, but that seems relatively straight-forward to me.

Whilst I'd like to believe that Santon will be right as rain after his little fluid draining session (enjoy your dinner folks!) I have a sneaking suspicion that he'll still have to undergo an operation. Put it this way, I'm not putting money on Santon making his debut against Blackburn although I'd love it if he did.

It's not all doom and gloom though remember. Hatem Ben Arfa is still pencilled in to make his comeback against Nottingham Forest on Tuesday evening so, hopefully, we'll be one player up by the time Steve Kean brings his funky chicken family to St James' Park next Saturday.

You never know, maybe we may even be two players up!