Newcastle United take on Arsenal at St James' Park in the 12:30pm TNT Sports televised game on Saturday fresh from a convincing win over Chelsea in the Carabao Cup.
The Magpies need another top performance as they come up against Mikel Arteta's title-challengers, but the win on Wednesday night over the Blues should hopefully have given Eddie Howe's side a much-needed confidence boost.
Newcastle are without a win in the Premier League in five games and really need to turn their season around.
Meanwhile Arsenal saw off Preston North End in the Carabao Cup coming off the back of a defeat to Bournemouth and a draw against Liverpool in the Premier League.
Both sides will be hoping to get back to winning ways in the League, but as Chris Sutton points out in his score prediction for the BBC, Arsenal have a score to settle at St James' Park.
This is a bit of a grudge match after what happened when Arsenal came to St James' Park last season and lost to a controversial Anthony Gordon goal.
Newcastle are on a run of five league games without a win, but they have been a little unlucky during that spell. They are creating plenty of chances, but just not scoring enough of them.
I worry about Arsenal in the final third too, though, because they are wasteful as well.
The Gunners really need a win here to cling on to the tail of leaders Manchester City, but my gut feeling is that Newcastle will get something out of this game, and it has got a draw written all over it.
Sutton's prediction: 1-1
In all truth we'd still take the draw despite the clear need for a win right now. There are still plenty of opportunities for Newcastle to go on a winning run and coming up against Arsenal when our form is shaky at best is a big challenge.
Thankfully, their form isn't ideal either so we do have the a chance of repeating last season's victory, and if it also happens to be in controversial circumstances like last time, that would just be gravy.
We certainly enjoyed swimming in those Arsenal tears last year.
PL | GD | PTS | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
1 |
Liverpool
|
14 | 18 | 35 |
2 |
Chelsea
|
15 | 17 | 31 |
3 |
Arsenal
|
15 | 14 | 29 |
4 |
Manchester City
|
15 | 6 | 27 |
5 |
Nottingham Forest
|
15 | 1 | 25 |
6 |
Aston Villa
|
15 | 0 | 25 |
7 |
Brighton
|
15 | 3 | 24 |
8 |
Bournemouth
|
15 | 3 | 24 |
9 |
Brentford
|
15 | 3 | 23 |
10 |
Fulham
|
15 | 2 | 23 |
11 |
Tottenham Hotspur
|
15 | 12 | 20 |
12 |
Newcastle United
|
15 | -2 | 20 |
13 |
Manchester United
|
15 | 1 | 19 |
14 |
West Ham United
|
15 | -8 | 18 |
15 |
Everton
|
14 | -7 | 14 |
16 |
Leicester
|
15 | -9 | 14 |
17 |
Crystal Palace
|
15 | -6 | 13 |
18 |
Ipswich
|
15 | -13 | 9 |
19 |
Wolves
|
15 | -15 | 9 |
20 |
Southampton
|
15 | -20 | 5 |