The Magpies face a Leverkusen side who are just one point behind them in the group phase and who currently sit fourth in the Bundesliga table, albeit 14 points shy of leaders Bayern Munich.<\/p>\n
United, meanwhile, head to the BayArena looking to further boost their hopes of progressing, having won three of their five games in the competition so far this term.<\/p>\n
Head coach Howe believes Kasper Hjulmand’s men will provide stern opposition – and that the midweek match in Germany will be a useful indicator of how his team are shaping up ahead of a hectic month of action.<\/p>\n
He spoke to the media at the BayArena on Tuesday afternoon. Here are some of the main talking points from his pre-match media briefing:<\/p>\n
On Bayer Leverkusen…<\/p>\n
“Leverkusen are an outstanding football team, true to their identity. <\/p>\n
“It will be another test of how far we have come and how far we have to go.”<\/p>\n
On team selection, with the Tyne-Wear derby to follow on Sunday…<\/p>\n
“I think we will pick a team that will be strong tomorrow and strong on Sunday.<\/p>\n
“We have a few injuries to our backline which has been the case for a few games now. <\/p>\n
“We don\u2019t necessarily have the depth at the moment, but we come here with a strong squad and we are ready for both games this week.”<\/p>\n
On Yoane Wissa, who made his Magpies debut in the win over Burnley on Saturday…<\/p>\n
“He looks positive, body language is very good. He\u2019s been boosted by coming on the pitch and he’s ready to take on minutes. <\/p>\n
“The challenge we have now is limited training times between games, which we have to get right.<\/p>\n
“He showed the qualities he had in those twenty minutes, and he will only get better.”<\/p>\n
On a big week ahead…<\/p>\n
“It has been an intense week. We finished the game on Saturday, and immediately prepare for the next one. <\/p>\n
“We are having to cram a lot of work into a short period of time. We are excited by this one and looking forward to the challenge. It’s a tough game for us.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Magpies face a Leverkusen side who are just one point behind them in the group phase and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":309940,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-309939","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309939\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/309940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}