Game On! Newcastle v Aston Villa

Game on at SJP! Welcome one and all to our 'Game On' article which this afternoon will feature the visit of Paul Lambert's Aston Villa outfit to St James' Park.

Newcastle head into this game on the back of a narrow victory in the Europa league on Thursday night. Narrow it might have been, but ultimately it was enough to see us secure a passage through to the group stages of the competition, meaning we can look forward to more odd kick-off times as the season progresses.

I say odd kick-off times, because this one is odd. It's a 4pm kick-off on a Sunday which usually means we are being shown on Sky, but not this time around. In fact we aren't scheduled for any live TV broadcasting here in the UK today so you know what you have to do if you can't actually get to the match...

As an interesting sub-plot today, there is a chance that we could see some history being made by witnessing our 1000th Premier League goal being scored. For that to happen we need to score two today, so the scorer of the second goal will be written into history basically.

As ever team news will be published below as and when it becomes available and if you haven't already done so I would suggest reading Connor's match preview which details injury news for both sides plus some other titbits such as previous history and likely team selections.

Which just about neatly wraps it up. We saw a largely second string side once more in midweek so I think it's pretty safe to assume that we'll see more of what are our "big hitters" for this match. Plus the transfer window is closed now so hopefully those players that do remain can get their heads in to gear, focus on the match, and send the fans into the international break on the back of a win.

Howay the lads!

Newcastle: Time Krul, Danny Simpson, Steven Taylor, Fabricio Coloccini, Davide Santon, Hatem Ben Arfa, Vurnon Anita, Yohan Cabaye, Jonas Gutierrez, Papiss Cisse, Demba Ba

Subs: Steve Harper, Mike Williamson, Dan Gosling, Gael Bigirimana, Sylvain Marveaux, Romain Amalfitano, Gabriel Obertan

Aston Villa: Brad Guzan, Matt Lowton, Ron Vlaar, Ciaran Clark, Eric Lichaj, Brett Holman, Karim El Ahmadi, Stephen Ireland, Barry Bannan, Andreas Weimann, Darren Bent

Subs: Shay Given, Nathan Baker, Gabriel Agbonlahor, Charles N’Zogbia, Graham Burke, Jordan Bowery, Derrick Williams