Newcastle United team news to face Tottenham Hotspur down under is in

Newcastle United and Tottenham Hotspur are about to get their much-maligned friendly in Australia underway. Kick-off is 10:45am BST and you can follow live on NUFC TV.

Eddie Howe has named a strong starting XI for the exhibition match which is set to take place at Melbourne Cricket Ground.

Aussie Garang Kuol has to make do with a place on the bench for his homecoming but he may get a run-out at some point, but if not we expect he'll get some minutes on Friday for sure.

Kieran Trippier captains the side which also has Alexander Isak and Bruno Guimaraes in from the start.

Is Eddie Howe going strong today and weaker on Friday to rest big stars?

Nick Pope starts between the sticks while Elliot Anderson and Miguel Almiron get a start too.

We're wondering if Howe is going strong on this one to give the top players a longer recovery time as he fields a weaker side on Friday.

It should make for a competitive game against Spurs today, but there will be people watching on worried about injuries, namely national coaches.

It's a couple of hours off work if nothing else

At the end of the day, the season still isn't over with the FA Cup, Championship play-offs and Champions League all to be fought, and were Newcastle or Spurs partaking in any of those games, there wouldn't be so much concern about the fitness of players.

There are obviously points to be made about them being meaningless games and having to travel around the globe to play in them, but the fact remains, if the Premier League hadn't throttled the life out of the game, it wouldn't be happening at all.

At least we get an excuse to skive off work for a couple of hours in the middle of the day.