Newcastle fans not happy with Premier League's referee choice for Brighton visit

Newcastle United face bogey team Brighton and Hove Albion on Saturday at St James' Park in a traditional 3pm kick-off.

Newcastle's record against Brighton is nightmarish, with no wins in the last six attempts against the Seagulls, so the Magpies will need all the luck they can get on Saturday if they are to halt this embarrassing run of defeats.

We're still a few days away from teh game, and already Newcastle's luck appears to be more on the bad side.

The Premier League has announced the officials for this weekend's games, and our fixture has been handed to Chris Kavanagh as the man in the middle.

The last time Chris Kavanagh was in charge of a game involving Newcastle, he ended up being dropped by the Premier League for the next round of fixtures.

Kavanagh had shocker last time out 

As Newcastle knocked Aston Villa out of the FA Cup with a 3-1 win, all of the attention after the game was on the officials who made a series of blunders throughout the match.

The linesman, Nick Greenhalgh, failed to spot three players in an offside position for Aston Villa's goal, while Kavanagh failed to send off Lucas Digne for a bad challenge on Jacob Murphy, before Digne was again saved by Kavanagh's incompetence after handling the ball in the area. Kavanagh spotted the handball, but awarded a free kick despite the contact clearly being well inside the box.

Wayne Rooney called it 'one of the worst decisions he'd ever seen' as Newcastle fans watched on in utter disbelief. Thankfully, Newcastle got the victory that Kavanagh seemed so intent on denying them.

The decision hasn't gone down well with Newcastle fans

After it was announced that Kavanagh would be in charge on Saturday, the reaction on X has understandably been pretty negative, with fans saying he shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a Premier League game.

One fan even claimed that he owes us a few decisions, but we doubt we'll get anything off him. 

At least he will have VAR to bail him out this time as the FA Cup game didn't have the technology available. The game has been identified by many as a prime example of how referees rely far too much on VAR.

It looks like we're in for an interesting game, then.