Davide Santon Injury Update: Out Four Weeks After Third Knee Surgery

According to ESPN Soccernet, Newcastle full back Davide Santon will undergo a third surgery on his right knee after aggravating a "cartilage problem" in training on Thursday. The way Alan Pardew tells the story, it's nothing more than a bump:

He's been through a really thorough medical and he's a little bit unlucky as we're only a week or so on from the medical. He trained today and trained well. It was just when he came off, he complained a little bit and we're erring on the side of caution with him.

Surgery is certainly an extremely cautious way to go about things. Pardew still didn't specify what kind of surgery the young Italian would be undergoing, but he described it as a "keyhole" surgery, which seems to indicate that it may be minimally invasive.

Newcastle have three league matches (at Aston Villa, Blackburn Rovers at home, at Wolverhampton Wanderers) and a Carling Cup match (at Nottingham Forest) over the next four weeks, with a league match at home against Tottenham Hotspur just past that four week threshold. It's not exactly a murderer's row as far as the fixture list goes, but then again it would be nice if Santon had some time to get acquainted with his teammates before attempting to traverse the particularly rough parts of the schedule.