'I actually think': Chris Sutton makes bold claim when predicting who will win on Sunday, Newcastle United or Crystal Palace
Newcastle United will be hoping to make it back-to-back wins in the Premier League on Sunday when they take on a shaky Crystal Palace side at St James' Park in a 3 pm kick-off live on Sky Sports.
Crystal Palace may be boosted by the arrival of Brennan Johnson, who is eligible to make his debut on Sunday, but the Magpies are on home turf and coming into this one off the back of a 3-1 win.
Newcastle could also be boosted by the potential returns of Sven Botman, Kieran Trippier and Tino Livramento. We don't expect any of the trio to start, but just psychologically, that's a huge bonus.
We are expecting a cagey affair, and probably another game like the win over Burnley, where we may find that we struggle for moments in the game rather than fully dominating the fixture.
Chris Sutton is expecting Toon domination
Chris Sutton, meanwhile, says he is expecting Newcastle to 'run away' with this one in his prediction for the BBC.
"Crystal Palace are another team I've been wrong about a lot recently - they are on a dismal run, with only one point from their past four games.
"I should have thought about it more when I was making my predictions because they are badly missing the firepower of Ismaila Sarr, who is away at Afcon with Senegal.
"Brennan Johnson will add some fresh legs to the Eagles' attack, but I actually think Newcastle will run away with this one.
"I always fancy Newcastle at home to score and also to run over teams, but this season they have sometimes struggled to put games to bed.
"I am backing them to do all of the above this time, however. Eddie Howe's side smashed Palace 5-0 last season, and this should be another convincing win.
"Sutton's prediction: 3-0"
Can we have a nice, big, convincing win, please?
We hope Sutton is right about this one. A big, convincing win to kick off the new year would give Toon fans hope that we can start to right the ship this season.
Once again, though, it's the three points that are important. We weren't happy with how we did it against Burnley, but that win saw us spend the night in the top half of the table before we dropped back down to 13th.
We'd obviously love to win and do it convincingly so we can write a positive post-match review, but beggars can't be choosers right now.
