Nick Woltemade keeps his place - Newcastle United team news ahead of clash with Everton at St James' Park

Newcastle United and Everton will duke it out in an old-fashioned 3pm kick-off today at St James' Park with no live UK TV coverage.

The Magpies are looking to add to their Champions League win in midweek to keep their dreams alive of qualifying for the competition again this season.

Meanwhile, Everton are hoping to halt a run of bad form after suffering three straight defeats.

Eddie Howe has sprung a couple of surprises with his starting lineup today, not least of which is sticking with Nick Woltemade in his lineup.

Nick Woltemade is back up front for Newcastle, by the looks of things

Nick Woltemade came in for a lot of criticism after his poor display on Tuesday, and we felt sure he'd lose his spot in the starting XI as a result, especially with Jacob Ramsey returning to fitness.

Instead, Ramsey comes into a midfield three along with Sandro Tonali and Joelinton, and it looks like Nick Woltemade has been returned to his familiar role as striker.

We're not sure how that's going to play out as he's hardly been prolific of late, but we'll have to see.

We can't wait to see Anthony Elanga and Anthony Gordon blistering down the wings only to have nobody to hit in the box

Elsewhere, Malick Thiaw returns to the defence along with Lewis Hall, and it is Dan Burn who gets the nod to start ahead of Sven Botman, who is on the bench.

Anthony Elanga is preferred to Harvey Barnes, which would make sense if we had a striker with any pace to keep up with Elanga and Anthony Gordon. Instead, we can already foresee our wingers getting into good areas and having nobody to find as Woltemade trots up to the box from deep.

Yoane Wissa is on the bench, and he could give Newcastle a new option in the second half, but we're just going to have to see how it goes. We've been wrong plenty of times before when criticising Howe's lineups, let's hope this is another one of those times.