Newcastle announce Mbemba may play against Gladbach

There is splendid good news regarding the transfer of Chancel Mbemba.  He still faces the formality of a Visa hearing in Europe in the middle of this week (for which he must leave England), but The Official has published that in spite of that, Anderlecht have agreed to let Mbemba take part in the NUFC friendly against Borussia Mönchengladbach tomorrow.  This basically amounts to the "trial" situation that we wrote off in a piece updating the transfer's progress the other day.

It must be assumed that Newcastle have given the Belgian side assurances that if something were to happen to Mbemba during the friendly that it will not affect the completion of the deal as it is currently agreed.  It does now give hope that he may, in fact, be able to start the Premier League opener against Southampton as surely it lets us know that the Congolese was involved in training at least today and potentially yesterday.  It also suggests that Steve McClaren was not prepared to start the season with a starting central pairing of any of The Championship 3, which is good.  Very good.