Matchday: Hull (h), the kids are alright

It was an interesting team selection, but it was kind of forced, wasn't it? Newcastle had to make changes, basically, didn't they?

They did.

Nine injuries, if you include Ewan Jowan, the goalkeeper.

But to outfield players, there were eight.

There were five under-21 players on the bench, three of whom are 17 years of age.

None of them got on the pitch in the end, but they were all on the bench as potential outfielders.

So there's Michael Mills, who's a forward.

There's Vaktang Salia, who's a striker.

Neither of those had featured during pre-season with the first team, but there was Mirdrag Pivas, who did feature during pre-season.

He's a defender, he's 21.

Mason Miley, who we've spoken about before, he was there.

Then the fifth one was Kyron Thompson, who'd only just arrived.

He's a 17-year-old, arrived from Arsenal somewhere.

A lot of excitement about him, but these are very young lads.

And given Newcastle signed very young players for the first team over the summer to then have the bench significantly reduced in age further by that.

I mean, actually, if you include Eladji Bamba and Basmana Touré, seven of Newcastle's nine substitutes were aged 20 or under.

It's

insane, isn't it?

It is.

It just says a lot.

I mean, there was a fair bit of experience in parts of the start in XI, but also because Tino Levremendo, who'd gone down this morning, we haven't felt something...

This morning, apparently, according to...

I asked Matthias Geisler about it after the game, and he said he felt something this morning after the knock-on effect from yesterday's training.

So they'd lost Livermantle, so Lewis Miley shifts to right-back, and then in midfield, you have Sean Sturr and Joe Willock as sort of the two number sixes.

It wasn't a change of system.