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Wilson in contention for Burnley trip, says Bruce
Leading goalscorer Callum Wilson could return to the Newcastle United squad for Sunday's trip to Burnley (12pm kick-off).
United head to Turf Moor this weekend in need of crucial Premier League points as the season heads towards its conclusion.
And the Magpies may be boosted by the return of England forward Wilson, who has excelled during his first campaign at St. James' Park with ten goals in 21 league games.
He has been missing since February's win over Southampton but has come through training unscathed, and head coach Steve Bruce has confirmed that the 29-year-old is in contention for the trip to the home of the Clarets along with winger Allan Saint-Maximin.
"I’m sure everyone’s asking about whether Callum and Allan will be in the squad," he said.
"We’ve still got two days of training – we train today and tomorrow – but Callum and Allan have trained all week, so that's good news for us that they're available."
United will be without the services of captain Jamaal Lascelles for the game against Sean Dyche's men, though, after the centre back suffered an injury in the home draw with Spurs last week.
Winger Ryan Fraser is likely to miss out, too, but both Ciaran Clark and Federico Fernández are available and Bruce also delivered some encouraging news on the fitness of frontman Andy Carroll.
“The disappointing thing is we’ve lost the captain Lascelles with a foot injury which unfortunately happened last week against Spurs, so that's a blow to us,” he said.
“With Fab Schär being missing too, it leaves us a bit light there. It’s not looking so good at the moment, so he'll have more scans today and over the weekend and he won't play this weekend, that's for sure.”
“Fernández obviously hasn't played for a long, long time, but he’s trained all week which is good news.
“Carroll's got a chance. Ryan Fraser, I don’t think (his injury) has improved at all so that’s a bit of a worry, a groin injury he’s got. Andy has a big training session today, he's missed the last two-and-a-half weeks, so we'll see how he is today.”
Newcastle beat the Clarets in the corresponding fixture at St. James’ Park earlier this season, and another victory could move Bruce’s men further away from the bottom three.
And the United boss paid tribute to his opposite number, who has established Burnley as a dogged top flight side in recent years, and says the Magpies will need to replicate the desire they showed during last weekend’s 2-2 draw with Spurs if they're to bring points home from Lancashire.
“I'm a big admirer of Dychey and what’s he's done,” said Bruce. “He plays a certain way, a certain style, he plays it his way, and it's been highly effective. It would be great to go and get a result there, and that would put us within a result of them, which would be good going into the last seven games of the season.”
He added: “We played very, very well last week. I'm sure there was a few raised eyebrows like there always is before the game. Well done to the players who came in and grasped the situation. We played very, very well – arguably as good as we've played all season considering the opposition.
“Now that's gone. We must now go and produce it against Burnley. Whoever we pick, we've got to go and produce a performance. If you do that and you're not quite good enough on the day, then nobody complains. That's where we've got to be – we've got to be at those sort of levels to make sure that we get something out of the match.”
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