Rafa Benitez suggests whether Newcastle winger Rolando Aarons is likely to play again this season

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Rolando Aarons has not played for Newcastle United since August due to injury.

Rolando Aarons celebrates scoring

Rafa Benitez has suggested that while he is delighted with the progress that Rolando Aarons has made in his comeback from injury, he is unlikely to play for Newcastle again this season due to the risk involved, the Chronicle reports.

The Magpies winger has not played for the club since August after breaking a bone in his foot and then following that up by rupturing his anterior cruciate ligament on the training ground in November, according to the Chronicle.

Surprisingly – given that the latter injury normally takes eight months to heal – the 21-year-old is back in full training around five months later, but Benitez suggested that a cautious approach may well be taken with the youngster during the final weeks of the season.

“Rolando we have been speaking about a lot, because usually you expect from a cruciate-ligament injury for it to be six to eight months, but for Rolando after four months he is now doing full training sessions with the team,” he said, as reported by the Chronicle.

“We are really pleased with him but we don’t want to take any risks because we don’t have too many games left, so we will see and we will monitor him every day and see how he feels.

Newcastle United manager Rafa Benitez

“Then we can decide if he can play with the Under-23s or whatever, but we will not rush because we don’t need to and we don’t want to take the risk.”

As Benitez alluded to, Newcastle are in a strong enough position in the Championship that getting Aarons back amongst the first-team does not need to be a priority.

While key first-team players may be brought back into the fold much sooner, Aarons’ status as more of a fringe player with the potential to be a star means that Benitez leaving him out of the final handful of games may not hurt the squad’s fortunes, and may perhaps give the wide-man the best chance of being ready to impress in pre-season.