Game On! Newcastle v Aston Villa
Game On at St James' Park Good afternoon all and welcome to the 'Game On' article for our tussle with Aston Villa at St James' Park.
Ordinarily I'd be banging on about home advantage and how we should be making it work for us but results since the turn of the year make any notion of home advantage redundant when it comes to Newcastle United.
Four successive home league defeats (or five if you include the FA Cup loss to Cardiff, although we did at least score a goal in that one) with ever increasing differences in the scorelines (0-1, 0-2, 0-3, 0-4) paint a worrying picture. Mitigating circumstances could include the sale of Yohan Cabaye, a failure to replace said Cabaye, and the loss of a number of first-team players, three of whom should return for this match, but in reality we've deserved what we've got from recent matches.
To find out if those three players have returned you'll need to check the team news which I will get up as soon as I can once it is released. You can find it at the bottom of this article but whilst you're waiting why not cast your eye over the match preview and familiarise yourself with some history, some facts and some injury news?
The game is being shown on Sky Sports here in the UK and has also been chosen for broadcast by a host of overseas channels so picking up a stream shouldn't be too much of an issue. If you do find a good stream then please share it by leaving a link in the 'comments' section below.
Which just about covers everything I need to mention ahead of the game. I just hope I'm left with something decent to report on come full-time. Actually, not even decent, just a win will do!
Howay the lads!
Newcastle: Tim Krul; Mathieu Debuchy, Mike Williamson, Fabricio Coloccini, Paul Dummett; Moussa Sissoko, Cheik Tiote, Vurnon Anita, Yoan Gouffran; Loic Remy, Papiss Cisse
Subs: Rob Elliott, Massadio Haidara, Mapou Yanga-Mbiwa, Steven Taylor, Dan Gosling, Shola Ameobi, Luuk de Jong
Aston Villa: Brad Guzan; Leandro Bacuna, Ron Vlaar, Nathan Baker, Ryan Bertrand; Ashley Westwood, Fabian Delph, Karim El Ahmadi; Gabriel Agbonlahor, Christian Benteke, Andreas Weimann
Subs: Jed Steer, Yacouba Sylla, Grant Holt, Ciaran Clark, Marc Albrighton, Aleksandar Tonev, Joe Bennett
