Newcastle United Match Preview

It was exactly a year ago that West Ham United played outside of London for the first time last campaign. There are similarities this season too. However, the difference here is that this afternoon sees the Hammers play host to a team that is not from the capital, as Newcastle United are the visitors to Stratford.

The last team to arrive in East London were Brentford, who made the journey having not collected anything from their previous road trips. Unfortunately for the home faithful, Keith Andrews’ men left with maximum points from here last month, as the Irons continued to falter at home.

After an eight-day break, following the 2-1 defeat at newly-promoted Leeds United last time out, Nuno Espírito Santo will hope his tenure in charge of the club will finally get up and running here.

Before the break for October’s international fixtures, Espírito Santo’s team faced back-to-back away matches and only took one point out of a possible six. With the team still having only picked up a solitary win since August, now is the time to finally put an end to what has been a dreadful run of form.

They now face another set of consecutive home games and they will be hoping to do to Eddie Howe’s Magpies what they couldn’t achieve against the Bees just thirteen days ago and steal a much-needed home win.

Despite European football making a return to Tyneside this season, I suspect that the away fans will have been expecting more positives than their team have shown up to this point.

The visitors have only had three days to prepare for this game, having progressed to the fifth round of the Carabao Cup in midweek after beating fellow Premier League side Tottenham Hotspur 2-0.

Newcastle’s busy period shows no sign of relenting either. They are back in action on Wednesday night, when they face Spanish opposition in the shape of Athletic Club Bilbao in the UEFA Champions League. With that in mind, the Irons might fancy their chances of picking up a first win on home soil since 27 February.

Konstantinos Mavropanos is set to miss a second straight game here, as he continues to recover from a leg injury, while Kyle Walker-Peters is likely to be restored to the starting line-up and fill in for youngster Oliver Scarles, who broke his collarbone at Elland Road in their previous encounter.

Callum Wilson replaced the youngster in that match and he will be keen to feature against his former club, while Mateus Fernandes will be looking for another start after coming off the bench to score against Daniel Farke’s side.

Alphonse Areola is expected to retain his place in goal for this game. It will be interesting to see what he has learnt, having spent the last few days working under new Goalkeeping Coach Rui Barbosa. The Portuguese has teamed up with Billy Lepine after joining the club earlier this week.

George Earthy returned to action in the Development Squad’s 3-2 victory over Sky Bet League Two outfit Swindon Town in the EFL Trophy five days ago and Espírito Santo may feel it necessary to include him in the matchday squad.

The match is a 2pm kick-off and for the third straight game, live coverage will be screened by Sky Sports with build-up beginning at 1pm. The referee is Robert Jones.