By Paul Brown

Gabby Agbonlahor, Carlos Cuellar and James Collins are all out of Sunday's top-flight clash with Newcastle United.

But manager Kevin MacDonald hopes to have the trio available for the Europa League play-off decider against Rapid Vienna next Thursday.

Agbonlahor [back, hamstring], Cuellar [hamstring] and Collins [calf] all missed the opening Barclays Premier League clash with West Ham.

And none of the three have recovered in time for the St James's Park match this weekend.

Steve Sidwell [achilles] misses out too while Andreas Weimann was stretchered off in the Europa League first leg clash at the Gerhard Hanappi Stadium with an ankle injury.

MacDonald is waiting for the results of a scan before assessing the severity of the problem.

But in better news, the manager expects new signing Stephen Ireland to play a part this weekend.

He said: "Stephen is obviously going to be involved - whether he starts I can't tell you that.

"Regarding the others, Andy will not be available for a while now and the scan will tell us more.

"James , Carlos and Gabby are hoping to play in some kind of game early next week to hopefully be available for next Thursday but they won't be available for this week.

"The only other one is Steve, with an achilles tendon injury. Apart from that, it is just everybody back."