PREM: Manchester City v Newcastle preview

Manchester City v Newcastle preview

Newcastle captain Jamaal Lascelles will return to Rafael Benitez's squad for Saturday's Premier League trip to Manchester City.

Central defender Lascelles missed the defeats by Chelsea and Nottingham Forest with an ankle injury amid reports of a training ground bust-up, but is back in the squad for the game at the Etihad Stadium.

Benitez has attracted criticism for his methods in the way he set up his team for what proved to be narrow Premier League losses to Tottenham and Chelsea, but he refuses to allow expectation to get in the way of realism as he attempts to turn around Newcastle's faltering start to the season.

As he prepared his players for an intensely difficult trip to reigning champions Manchester City on Saturday, he said: "You have to have ambition, but you have to be realistic. The best way for us to get results and to achieve what we want to achieve - and the main thing is to stay in the Premier League at the moment - is to be realistic and manage expectations.

"I can come here and say, 'Oh, we will attack and play three strikers' and everybody will be happy and the fans will say 'fantastic', and afterwards you can lose 6-0. We have to be realistic and manage expectations, and that is the best way for us as a football club to achieve what we want to achieve, and that is to get enough points to stay in the Premier League."

"We're in August," he said. "There are a lot of points to play for and the real season starts after the international break, every week three games, the travelling and no time to prepare for the games.

"We dropped two, or won one point at Wolves. The secret last season was when we did that we won the next game."

Manchester City have no fresh injury concerns, but Kevin De Bruyne (knee), Danilo (ankle) and Claudio Bravo (Achilles) remain sidelined.

Nineteen-year-old goalkeeper Aro Muric is set to be in the squad again having been on the bench at Molineux after being recalled from his loan at NAC Breda following the injury to regular No 2 Bravo.

Javier Manquillo (calf), midfielders Jonjo Shelvey (thigh) and Matt Ritchie (knee) are still out for Newcastle, while Isaac Hayden completes his three-match ban.