Lewis Miley has today pulled out of the England U21 camp with an injury. Although it has been described in the media so far as ‘just a knock’ and Miley is expected to be okay by the end of the break.
The issue with that diagnosis is that, last season, we were told Miley just had a dead leg that would keep him out for a couple of weeks. Instead, he was absent for ages. So I don’t trust anything yet.
This is now Miley’s sixth injury in just three seasons which, as a 20-year-old, doesn’t exactly bode well for the future and serious questions are beginning to arise about whether his injury record is actually just part of who he is as a player.
Miley’s injury record
Since he broke into the first-team in the 2023/2024 season, Lewis Miley has missed 47 Newcastle United games through injury. That means he has missed over half as many games as he has actually played for the club so far in his career.
The 20-year-old has faced a fever which kept him out for the best part of a month, a back injury, two different instances of broken bones in his leg which saw him miss nearly half a year in total, and of course that aforementioned ‘dead leg’ that kept him out for two months.
Unfortunately, for such a young player those sorts of patterns don’t usually bode well for his future career and, whilst it is the last thing anyone wants to admit, it does feel as though Miley’s injury record could become a serious obstacle to him ever establishing himself at Newcastle United.
The reassurance about this injury
If that is true then Newcastle fans can breathe a bit of a sigh of relief, especially considering the rather ludicrous amount of injuries the Magpies are currently contending with.
The hope will be that it is simply a precaution and that Miley is merely prioritising club football over international duty, which makes sense given it is at U21 level, but I can’t help feeling a little worried that we may be about to see a repeat of last season’s injury.
If Miley turns out to be absolutely fine, then brilliant. But the fact that we are even having to have the conversation about him possibly being injured again, after the amount of absence he has had over the past couple of years, is certainly worrying.
He clearly has bags of ability and it would be a real shame for his injuries to continue hampering his development in a season where his role is the biggest it has ever been at the club. Perhaps he is just one of those players we will have to wrap up in cotton wool.
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