Newcastle United looking strong - Eddie Howe reveals team to kickstart Magpies' defence of Carabao Cup

Newcastle United have entered the Carabao Cup at the third round as they look to defend their title. Things get underway at 7:45pm live on Sky Sports Plus as the Magpies take on League One Bradford City.

It looked like a pretty favourable draw for Newcastle to ease them back into the competition they won last season, but no game is ever easy, so Eddie Howe has put out a team with a good mix of first-team regulars and fringe players.

The extra fixtures from competing in the Champions League are set to put a strain on Eddie Howe's preferred XI, so we're looking at a season where we'll see the gaffer rotating the squad more often than we've seen in recent years.

This explains the starting XI Eddie Howe has come up with for the clash against Bradford, with Bruno Guimaraes back leading the team after sitting out Sunday's boring draw with Bournemouth.

It's back to a familiar 4-3-3 for Eddie Howe

We weren't too far off predicting how the team would line up this evening, with Eddie Howe opting for Emil Krafth and Lewis Hall over Kieran Trippier and Alex Murphy in our prediction.

It looks like we're back to our more familiar 4-3-3, which means we get to see how Malick Thiaw and Sven Botman look as a defensive partnership from the start of a game for the first time after they started as part of a trio against Bournemouth.

Will Osula will lead the line for Newcastle, with the Danish Under-21 striker being handed a chance ahead of £69 million summer signing Nick Woltemade.

There's no place in Bradford's starting lineup for Newcastle fan Andy Cook

Newcastle have a strong bench if things aren't quite going the way Eddie Howe is hoping, with the likes of Woltemade and Harvey Barnes on there to change things up to and Kieran Trippier and Tino Livramento to shore up the defence.

There's no Jacob Murphy in the squad, which is a bit of a worry given Howe mentioned that he had been nursing an Achilles problem. Hopefully, this is just a precautionary measure more than anything else.

Bradford's lifelong Newcastle United fan starts on the bench for the Bantams. We're sure he'll be itching to get onto the hallowed turf this evening.