No Stone Left Unturned

Basketball, a game of football against the Newcastle Eagles and training at the stadium - it has hardly been a normal week for United's stars. However, that is all part of some clever thinking on the part of the Club's coaching staff to freshen up the Magpies squad and prevent them from becoming bored or complacent at a crucial stage of the season. Newcastle head into Saturday's home Premier League fixture against Stoke aiming to record a sixth successive victory, but were given a break from their regular schedule at the Benton-based Training Centre earlier this week. It began on Monday with a double header of basketball and football against the all-conquering Eagles, and then 24 hours later the players were put through their paces on the Sports Direct Arena turf. And first team coach Steve Stone told nufc.co.uk it was a pyschological way of revitalising the troops. "It just freshens things up a little bit," he explained. "We've got some big games coming up and have got a lot of team play to do and set plays to do and we work hard throughout the season on that. But you are always doing it in the same environment. "We just wanted to change that, to freshen it up for the players at the this stage of the season. "Sometimes you want to take them away from the training ground just to break things up, and that has been the feeling this week. "The key is to try and keep their mind active from what they are normally doing throughout the week. It can become very mundane if you aren't careful, doing the same thing in the same environment every day. "The basketball and football contest against the Newcastle Eagles was great. Everybody thought that was a great success and the players loved it. "We are trying to freshen things up and you can sense by the players' moods that when they are back in on Thursday and Friday they will be raring to go for Stoke."