Newcastle United will limp into White Hart Lane on Sunday with Papiss Cissé among the walking wounded. The Senegal striker’s return to first-team action – and goalscoring – following his recovery from a broken kneecap has helped Alan Pardew keep his job and the manager is praying Cissé will pass a fitness test to face Tottenham.
“Papiss hasn’t trained all week,” said Pardew, whose side recorded their first Premier League win at Leicester’s expense last weekend. “He has a slight problem with his knee but it’s nothing to do with the prevous injury. We don’t think it’s anything major.”
It does not help that Emmanuel Rivière, Cissé’s understudy, is also a doubt as is Pardew’s key defensive midfielder Cheik Tioté. Siem de Jong, Rolando Aarons and Davide Santon are definitely sidelined.
“We haven’t got a crisis but we have one or two we are waiting on – Papiss, Tioté, Rivière,” Pardew said. “Papiss being fit is very important to us and we are sweating a little bit but I am not ruling anyone out at this stage.”
Pardew has at least been encouraged by the atmosphere among his fit personnel this week. “The mood in training has been much stronger,” he said. “Our resolve has grown and hopefully our confidence too. We’ve had a couple of blows on the injury front but I definitely feel the confidence round the camp has improved.”
Even so Newcastle remain in the bottom three. “Results have got to improve,” said Pardew, who feels his players’ morale was bolstered when Mike Ashley, the club’s owner – who has remained loyal to his manager through considerable recent adversity – visited the dressing room and celebrated with them after the 1-0 win against Leicester at St James’ Park.
“It just shows that we’re fighting on all fronts from the owner downwards,” said Pardew. “We tried to emphasise to the players that it’s very, very important that we get ourselves up the league and try to put a run of wins together.”
Pardew, probably more than anyone, is well aware there can be no cause for complacency in the wake of beating Leicester. “I think every Premier League manager fears for his job these days,” he said. “You have to be on your guard and you have to get results. At the moment our results need to improve.”