JAMAAL LASCELLES is confident Kenedy’s Cardiff City calamities will not affect the Newcastle United winger when he returns to action in the next couple of weeks.

Kenedy avoided a Football Association disciplinary charge yesterday, despite aiming a kick at Cardiff midfielder Victor Camarasa during Saturday’s goalless draw at the Cardiff City Stadium.

The FA can only launch retrospective disciplinary proceedings if an incident was missed by the match officials, and referee Craig Pawson indicated in his report that he had seen Kenedy kick out in the first half of Saturday’s game but opted not to produce a yellow or red card.

As a result, the Brazilian midfielder has escaped the possibility of a three-match ban, and while he is unable to line up against his parent club, Chelsea, in Sunday’s televised Premier League game, he will be available for next week’s Carabao Cup second-round game at Nottingham Forest and the following weekend’s trip to Manchester City.

He will still have to shake off the mental scars of Saturday’s outing, which saw him fail to complete a single first-half pass before missing a stoppage-time penalty that would have earned his side all three points.

He buried his head in his shirt in the immediate aftermath of Neil Etheridge’s spot-kick save, but his skipper expects him to shrug off any lingering disappointment quickly.

“He won’t let it affect him,” said Lascelles, who was Newcastle’s stand-out performer on Saturday. “He’s a confident lad, and that’s why he picked the ball up in the first place.

“I certainly don’t feel like I’ll have to take him to one side to build him back up, or anything like that. He’ll obviously be disappointed, but he was probably disappointed after the first game (against Tottenham) too because he wasn’t able to take the chance that came his way.

“He was disappointed straight after the miss, but he’ll shrug it off. He doesn’t have anything to feel down about because he was a massive player for us last year. He scored goals and got assists, and we all know what he’s capable of.

“Listen, it happens. Even (Cristiano) Ronaldo misses penalties. As a group, it’s about getting round each other and picking each other up. That’s what we do as a squad.”

While Kenedy’s availability after this weekend is a positive, Newcastle will still have to deal with a number of negative consequences from their trip to South Wales.

Isaac Hayden will be banned for the next three matches following his dismissal for a wild challenge on Josh Murphy, and Javier Manquillo is a major doubt for the Chelsea game after he was forced off with an injury.

DeAndre Yedlin could be available for the weekend, having been forced to sit out the trip to Cardiff after hobbling out of the opening-day defeat to Tottenham, but the spate of defensive injuries has underlined the lack of depth in the full-back areas and Rafael Benitez has conceded he is rethinking his plan to allow Jamie Sterry to leave on loan.

With Chelsea, Manchester City and Arsenal providing the opposition in Newcastle’s next three league games, the Magpies find themselves in a tough situation with just one point on the board, but Lascelles has laughed off any suggestion of the club being in trouble after just two games.

“I wouldn’t say this is a difficult period at all,” he said. “We’ve got a couple of players who have suffered little knocks and, at the weekend, we had to deal with a red card, but as a team I think we got through that okay.

“We’ll get through these next few games. We’ve got a big squad and good players in every area. There’s no need to panic. We’ll just stay calm and train hard, and whatever team the gaffer decides to go for, it will be a good one. We’ll go again.”

Nevertheless, Lascelles admits there was an air of disappointment as he and his team-mates left the field at Cardiff.

“It felt like a loss,” he said. “It’s obviously disappointing when you miss a last-minute penalty to win the game, but it’s a mistake, it happens.”