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Slimani going the extra mile ahead of Bournemouth trip

New signing Islam Slimani has been training alone in Algeria while visiting family ahead of the Magpies trip to the south coast this upcoming weekend.

Newcastle travel to bournemouth after a two week break since their last game in which they were 1-0 victors over Manchester United.

Slimani has been training at Algeria's national football centre in an attempt to ensure he is ready and available for the game this Saturday, Slimani has been nursing a thigh injury since joining from Leicester City back in January and has yet to feature for the Magpies.

The whole squad was given this past weekend off due to not featuring in the 5th round of the FA Cup, and Rafa Bentitez granted the striker permission to travel back to Algeria to visit his family.

Slimani and his teammates were all set to return to training today, but Slimani went the extra mile and did no let his recovery slow down while in North Africa as he continued to train even on his days off.

While at the Sidi Moussa training centre, Slimani worked with some of the coaches that normally oversee the training sessions during an international week.

However, it is still unclear whether or not Slimani has been given the green light to start joining in with the full first team training sessions yet.

But with being forced to miss the Leicester game Slimani can only feature ten times for Newcastle during the remainder of his loan spell so the Algerian is desperate to get some game time while at the club.

This now means manager Rafa Benitez will have a tough choice of picking between four strikers for the last 11 games of the season, but with Dwight Gayle, Joselu and Ayoze Perez all struggling for gaols this season Benitez will be hoping that Slimani can be the final piece of the puzzle in Newcastle's fight against relegation.

Credit to The Sun and Getty Images for the imagery used in this article.

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