Eddie Howe names almost completely unchanged squad as Brentford come to St James' Park for Premier League clash

After two long weeks of all partying and no football, Newcastle United are back in action tonight in a 7:45pm kick-off as Brentford come to St James' Park for a Premier League showdown.

When Newcastle played Brentford at home in the Premier League the Bees were unstoppable on their own turf and Newcastle paid the price going down to a 4-2 defeat.

Now, Thomas Frank has flipped the script and his Brentford side are performing much better on the road than they are at home.

Just in time for them to rock up at St James' Park to try and spoil the party.

Eddie Howe names unchanged squad from Wembley outing

This will, of course, be Newcastle's first game since the victory at Wembley on the 16th of March, so the test is whether the celebrations have spurred the lads on or wiped them out.

Eddie Howe has stuck with the same starting XI that dominated Liverpool at Wembley and that's likely to urge caution for Brentford, in fact, the only change in the squad is that Matt Targett misses out and youngster Leo Shahar makes it onto the bench.

We expect that the plan will be to dominate the ball more in this game, though, as Newcastle let Liverpool have the ball at Wembley before smashing them on the break in an absolute tactical masterclass by Howe.

Brentford have some quality and pace up front tonight

Newcastle United's 'priority target' Bryan Mbeumo starts for Brentford and will more than likely make life very difficult for Newcastle's defence.

Yoan Wissa and the uber-pacey Kevin Schade complete the Brentford attack meaning Fabian Schar and Dan Burn are going to have to be on their absolute top game tonight as they will not have the pace to cope with this front three.

The Magpies have the quality to out-perform Brentford, there's no doubt about that, the question is, as we've said, has the cup win spurred the lads on, or provided a huge distraction?