Newcastle United will not be able to rely on a recall for young Irish defender Alex Murphy amid their defensive injury concerns.

The Magpies were today assessing Dan Burn's fitness chances for the trip to Man City at the weekend after the 6ft 7in centre-back limped off with a groin injury in the FA Cup win over Birmingham City. But there was hope that Dutchman Sven Botman could be involved at the Etihad Stadium with his absence at St Andrew's at the weekend very much precautionary.

With Newcastle now down to just the bare bones in the centre-back after the departure of Lloyd Kelly to Juventus in January, Eddie Howe could be left with just Emil Krafth and Fabian Schar if he gets more bad news on Botman and Burn.

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Murphy is currently on loan at Bolton Wanderers, but the Trotters insisted on a no-recall clause in his contract, and he is tied down to the League One club until the end of the season. The 20-year-old saw his career at Bolton get off to a rocky start when the man who signed him, Ian Evatt, sacked on his first day of training!

Since then, Steven Schumacher has replaced Evatt, and Murphy has made three appearances for Wanderers, scoring in the 4-3 win over Crawley Town. Centre-back Miodrag Pivas is currently on loan at Willem II and Charlie McArthur is at Carlisle United.

Speaking on injury concerns, Howe said at the weekend: "In the last couple of weeks, we seem to have picked up a couple. It would be the last thing [we need] to derail us. We have such a small squad. Last season we had big numbers of players out and it disrupted us in the middle of the season. It seems that we’re just going through a little spell where, with a lot of big efforts in games, we’re just picking up one or two injuries."

Howe said he would have rested and rotated more at Birmingham had he had a bigger squad at his disposal. Burn's enforced selection cost Newcastle dear at St Andrew's.

The Newcastle head coach said: "I didn’t want to take that risk with any of our players that played on Wednesday because we knew the physical cost of that game, but numbers dictated we had to. That’s a real concern for us because we have such a small squad, as we've said all season."