'Outstanding' Newcastle United player is a 'changed athlete' after being ruled out for seven months
Eddie Howe says Lewis Miley has returned from his long injury lay-off in a better place physically.
The Stanley-born midfielder broke into Newcastle United’s first-team as a 17-year-old last season. He went on to make 26 appearances in all competitions with his goal in the 3-0 win over Fulham last December making him the club’s youngster-ever Premier League goalscorer.
An unprecedented amount of injuries led to Miley playing more games than the club would have liked. It is part of the reason why Howe believes Miley picked up a back issue in March, which brought a premature end to his breakthrough campaign.
The 18-year-old was on track to return for pre-season but fractured his metatarsal in a freak incident when running with one the club’s fitness coaches. Both injuries combined ruled Miley out for seven months in total.
Miley has been back training since the October international break and “looks in a really good place”, according to Howe. However, the Magpies’ head coach has no intention of throwing the teenager back into action.
Howe said: “He’s an outstanding player, he’s shown that in coming back to training. You’d expect to see some rustiness from him technically or some physical development still to go, but I think he’s come back physically like a changed athlete. He’s more solid and filled out which will naturally come as he gets older, but he looks like he’s used his time away from the training pitch very well.
“Technically he has been really, really good so I have got no issue with his game, I think he looks in a really good place. It’s just a case of managing [his workload] he’s still very young, he’s had a couple of injuries which reflected on maybe we overused him last year and we don’t want him to get injured again.
“I think small steps initially for Lewis, but hopefully he can progress into playing some big minutes for us.”
Miley has named on the bench for the last two Premier League matches against Brighton & Hove Albion and Chelsea.
United host Chelsea in the Carabao Cup fourth round this evening. A few changes to the starting XI are expected, but Miley is unlikely to be one of them.
Asked if Miley comes into his thinking, Howe replied: “He does, albeit we have got to be really careful with Lewy, we have to manage him right. Last week, If I think back to the Brighton game, he was probably on the bench ahead of time. He trained well, no problem with his training performances, he’s looked really good but just in respect to the injuries that he’s had we have to be really careful and manage his minutes.
“I’ll be taking guidance on that by the experts to make sure we don’t push him too quickly.”