Newcastle United have confirmed that Sven Botman will miss the rest of the season and a big chunk of the next one after he undergoes surgery for an ACL injury.

Sven Botman had already missed a bunch of games this season due to a knee injury he picked up last year, but as the statement put out by the club states, Botman opted for rehabilitation rather than surgery at the time and returned to action in December.

The 24-year-old Dutch international never looked anywhere near his best since he returned with fans wondering if he was perhaps rushed back too soon, and now it looks like we've got our answer.

Big questions now need to be asked - What is going on at the club with the medical department? Who is sending these players out to crumble?

Sven Botman now faces up to nine months out Newcastle's injury problems have been huge, but have they been self-inflicted? Newcastle have had a mountain of injuries to deal with this season, a lot of which have been long-term, too, and it has obviously been massively detrimental to the season and the need to get players back to fitness and back on the pitch was massive.

However, who has been making the calls to put them back into action? Is the medical team passing players as fit too early or is Eddie Howe overruling the advice he's been given to get players back?

We only need to look back to Jacob Murphy when he made his triumphant return to action after dislocating his shoulder only for it to literally fall out of the socket on the pitch minutes after he was introduced.

Somebody, somewhere needs to take responsibility for this as it's costing us far more than just points now.

Newcastle's medical team has chopped and changed throughout the season It was announced on New Year's Eve that head physio Danny Murphy had left the club but that came about after an extended period of leave, so that sounds like he wasn't even at work when all of this was going on.

There have been a few incomings and outgoings in the medical department, but ultimately somebody is making the call to push these players beyond their limits.

Unfortunately, we have to believe that it's Eddie Howe. We can understand his frustration when he was having to field the same starting eleven game after game, running them into the ground, that he would want somebody, anybody fresh to come in and take over, but was it really worth running the risk of exacerbating an existing problem?

We realise this just adds fuel to the anti-Howe agenda that we're so opposed to, but seriously, this needs to be addressed going forward before more players' careers are potentially affected.