City hoping time is on their side

WHILE Manchester City fans get another raw deal, having to travel to Newcastle for a Monday night fixture, Mark Hughes is not complaining.

An extra 48 hours to prepare for their latest Premier League fixture will have been a godsend to the City manager.

It provides Brazilians Jo, Robinho and Elano with extra time to recover from an exhausting trip to South America to take part in two World Cup qualifiers.

Usually they don’t arrive back until late Thursday or even the early hours of Friday morning which gives little time to get over jet lag for a Saturday fixture.

In the case of Robinho, it also gives him an extra two days to recover from the thigh injury picked up playing for Brazil against Colombia late on Wednesday night.

It was a worrying sight for everybody connected with City to see their £32million British-record signing leave the pitch on a stretcher.

It promises to be an intriguing clash at St James’ Park between two teams badly in need of points.

Since the euphoria of City’s 6-0 victory against Portsmouth, which coincided with the takeover of the club by the new mega-rich backers from Abu Dhabi, City’s form has been patchy.

They have lost in the Premier League to Wigan and Liverpool, been unceremoniously dumped out of the Carling Cup by League One side Brighton and limped past AC Omonia in the Carling Cup.

City have slipped into the bottom half of the table with three wins and four defeats from seven league games which is hardly the script for the new owners whose ambitions are to see City rival the big four.

They clearly have considerable work to do to achieve that goal, while Newcastle’s immediate objective is to pull away from the relegation places.

Newcastle are a club in turmoil, both on and off the pitch with owner Mike Ashley putting the club up for sale and manager Kevin Keegan quitting.

After drawing at Manchester United on the opening weekend of the season and then defeating Bolton in their next match, who could have envisaged such a dramatic fall from grace?

They lost four league games on the spin to slide into the relegation places until caretaker manager Joe Kinnear halted the demise in his first game, a 2-2 draw at Everton where they came from two goals down.

Kinnear has been appointed on a short-term contract until the club is sold, but he has a difficult job with a depleted strikeforce.

Former Inter Milan front man Obafemi Martins is out long term while Mark Viduka is also on the sidelines and Michael Owen’s woes continued last week when he tweaked a hamstring in training.