Up Next: The Marc Guehi Derby - The Fixture List's Latest Curveball Narrative in NUFC's Bonkers Season

To an outsider, the Premier League season is just 38 weeks of non-stop, repetitive ball-kicking. But us fans know better.

There is so much nuance and drama behind every Premier League team. There's the politics going on in the boardrooms... the managers facing the sack with one more bad result... and the history of bad blood between seemingly innocuous fanbases. All in all, the fixture list can throw up some incredibly intriguing ties at the most opportune moments, almost like it wrote its own devilishly tantalising script back in August.

To many Toon fans, Crystal Palace v Newcastle is traditionally about as dead rubber as they come in the Premier League. South v North... mid-table mediocrity meets mid-table mediocrity. Only this season, the stakes are high, incredibly high... considering we're not even in December yet. Something has already gone drastically wrong for both sides this season.

Crystal Palace: The Premier League's Worst Hangover Club this season

Palace fans seem to have drifted from Premier League season to Premier League season with a growing sense of apathy in recent years. Yes, they're no longer the yo-yo club they were in the early noughties... but having watched their south coast neighbours Brighton rise through the echelons of English football and firmly supplant Palace as the league's plucky southern underdogs, there must have been a sense of missed opportunity over recent years.

But last season, that all changed. Jean-Philippe Mateta was a striker reborn; Adam Wharton was quickly usurping Kobbie Mainoo as England's most exciting young deep midfielder, and although Michael Olise had set sail for Germany, they'd retained the services of Eberechi Eze and Marc Guehi. They'd finished the season like a house on fire and were hoping of an outside chance of Europe this year...

Sadly, that optimism has all but dried up. Wharton and Eze have been injured... Mateta has been gently eased back into the side following his expeditions at the Olympics and big money arrival Eddie Nketiah has been shoehorned out wide onto the wing.

But hey, at least they still have 'superstar' Marc Guehi!

One constant this season however, has been the presence of centre-back Marc Guehi, who was one of England's shining lights at the Euros and was dubbed a 'superstar' by Palace owner Steve Parish, who seemed to revel in dangling Guehi like a carrot in front of Newcastle United before shuffling a few steps back, and shuffling the asking price up by a further few million each time.

It was a trick that made Newcastle look like mugs and Parish look like a negotiating genius... but if anything, there have been no winners from this frankly tiresome summer transfer saga.

Palace, Newcastle and Guehi have all suffered from the defender's long-standing transfer saga

Even at the time, Parish's comments about Newcastle paying 'superstar money' for a 'superstar' player seemed like backing himself into a corner. Guehi had just two years left on his deal, meaning he would either walk away for peanuts or even nothing in 12-24 months, or would demand said 'superstar money' from Parish in order to sign a new contract. You can't give it the big'un without backing that statement up with cash. And when Guehi's reliable centre back partner Joachim Andersen agreed a perceived sideways move to London rivals Fulham, it wasn't a good look for the direction of Palace.

Guehi watched as Palace stalwarts such as Olise, Andersen, Jordan Ayew and Sam Johnstone left the club, with very little brought in to elicit excitement. In a Palace squad that has seen other big players such as Wilfried Zaha leave in recent years too, Guehi must be wondering why Parish showed such steely determination to retain him when compared to the acceptance of letting others leave. The recent transfer activity didn't scream of a club moving in an ambitious direction, and their start to the 24-25 season has backed that up.

Newcastle United fans initially believed they had dodged a bullet as Palace sank to the foot of the table without a trace while Newcastle made their best start to a Premier League season in over a decade. However, the cracks soon began to show. Dan Burn's lack of recovery pace was brutally exposed in the defeats to Fulham and Chelsea, while suspension to the big Geordie man meant a rare league start for Lloyd Kelly against West Ham. The game finished 2-0 to the mediocre Hammers, with Kelly's non-existent man-marking for Tomas Soucek's opener drawing mass criticism. Fabian Schar and Dan Burn have a combined age of 64. Jamaal Lascelles and Sven Botman are still firmly entrenched on the injury table. The time to act was in the summer, because when everyone else around you is moving forward and strengthening, standing still quickly becomes falling backwards in the Premier League.

Then there is Guehi himself. Whether he's suffering from having a very short pre-season break, struggling to establish a partnership with Andersen's replacement, or simply sinking under the pressure of being touted as a 'superstar' by his employer, the England defender has made a very poor start to the season, with highlights including being outpaced by a 37-year old Jamie Vardy, being sat down on his backside by Bryan Mbuemo and keeping just two Premier League clean sheets in 12 matches.

Even just 12 games in... defeat for either side on Saturday could be a damning death knell on their hopes for the season

Even before a ball was kicked this season, this fixture was eyed up as a spicy one after all the Marc Guehi banter from both fanbases. But that squabble must take a supporting role now. There is simply too much at stake in terms of points. For Palace, their solitary victory this season, coupled with six defeats, leaves them in 19th place. Another home defeat going into December, and a relegation battle will start to morph from a nightmarish possibility into a grim reality. To make matters worse, Wolves have won their last two games and have fantastic fixtures coming up, Everton have solidified their leaky defence, and Leicester have opted to eject their misfiring manager before it gets too late.

As for Newcastle, they seem to be trying their best to emulate Tottenham Hotspur this season. Impressive points taken off the likes of Arsenal, Manchester City and high-flying Nottingham Forest have been sobered somewhat by humbling home losses against Brighton and West Ham. There was also the whimpering performance at Craven Cottage. This was supposed to be the season that Newcastle welcomed back their injury-stricken stars and mounted a serious attack on the top 4 once again, unburdened by European football. Instead, this season has been more stop-start than a second-hand car with a dodgy brake. Howe's men have taken points when they haven't deserved to, then played teams off the park yet come away with nothing thanks to poor finishing. They simply can't slip-up again against a team with one win all season.

And who was that one win against? Tottenham Hotspur of course.

All in all, this once dull fixture is instead laced with plenty of intrigue, plenty at stake, and plenty of supporting characters ready to rear their heads.

Another new dawn in Eddie's season? Or another defeat to add volume to the murmurings of discontent around the Geordie fanbase?

We will see...