Souness explains hamstring curse

Newcastle v Man City

Newcastle manager Graeme Souness believes the playing surface at the club's training ground may be to blame for a spate of hamstring injuries.

Kieron Dyer, Emre and Albert Luque have all suffered similar injuries, and Souness says a pattern has emerged.

He said: "We've lost close on 600 days to hamstrings alone in the last three years at the training ground.

"In the two years before Newcastle came to this training ground we were on a par with the rest of the Premiership."

Souness told the League Managers' Association website: "We were losing about 90 days a year to hamstring injuries. We're running treble that now. It's something we think that we've got to the bottom of now.

"We have a very hard fibre sand area that was the only area we could really train on last year and we felt that was our biggest problem, and the (hamstring) statistics bear that out.

"So we now have another area that we can train on at the training ground which isn't fibre sand and until we get lots of rain and the winter months come along we have to avoid the fibre sand."