Newcastle United host Sunderland at St James’ Park on Sunday in the last edition of the Tyne-Wear derby for this Premier League season after the lads dropped the first one back in December.
Newcastle enters the game sitting ninth in the table with 42 points and risking dropping below 10th with another loss this weekend. Sunderland sit two points below NUFC in 13th, but a win would see them overtake their rivals going to sleep on Sunday.
Eddie Howe’s side are coming off the most embarrassing defeat
in club history—a 7-2 defeat at Barcelona in front of millions watching across Europe and the world over—which probably didn’t happen at the best possible time with such a mammoth game for the Geordie faithful taking place so shortly after.
That said, the loss might be the thing that sparks a strong rebound on Sunday, with Newcastle’s season now focused solely on putting on a good run of league results to try and salvage the campaign with only eight games remaining.
At home, Newcastle have scored in 15 consecutive matches in all competitions but have conceded in each of their last seven on Tyneside. The lads won’t have Fabian Schar, Bruno Guimaraes, Emil Krafth and Lewis Miley. Sandro Tonali is a game-time decision but is highly unlikely to play.
Sunderland arrive on the back of a 1-0 defeat to Brighton & Hove Albion and have won just two of their last 10 matches in all competitions. But they already defeated NUFC and won the reverse fixture 1-0 at the end of the 2025 calendar year, and it’s not that they are so far down in the table.
In an ominous note, Newcastle have not beaten Sunderland in Premier League play for the past 10 meetings, with the last Magpie win coming all the way back in Aug. 2011. Time for a change, ain’t it?
Here are some of Howe’s Wisdom Nuggets, courtesy of NUFC.co.uk
On injury issues in the United squad…
“We will wait and see (on Tonali). It is maybe not as bad as first feared as he was coming off the pitch.
“We will see how he is today and then make a decision closer to the game.
“(Miley) will be after the internationals, hopefully after the break. Fingers crossed it will be the same with Bruno and also for Fab (Schar).”
On mental preparation for the derby…
“We have a bit of work to do, psychologically, with the players off the back of what was a really strange game to digest and review.
“I think the players will hopefully have learned from a lot of similar games this season, in the respect of we’ve had a crazy group of games where we’ve had to leave one game very quickly and focus on the next. That’s a skill, I think, to be able to park it and move onto the next one.
“We have to do that really quickly and effectively because the game will be on us before we know it. It’s a 12 o’clock kick-off, a very quick turnaround. There’s a bit of work to do today and tomorrow with the players.”
On Sunderland…
“Sunderland have had a good season. The jump from Championship to the Premier League is big.
“We know how tough the game was against them earlier in the season. We need to use that experience of the first game, the emotions we felt afterwards. We are focused on delivering a really good performance.”
On the “need to perform”…
“We need to perform. The positives of this game for us can be huge, for the fans, for the city. We need to make sure our preparation for this game is as good as we can be to make sure we help the players.
“The focus for us is to try and win the game. For us, we have to try and recover physically and mentally.
“The players will be ready for this game. We have eight massive games to go.”
Howay!
- Date: Sunday, March 22nd
- Kick-off: 12:00 BST / 8:00 EST
- Location: St. James’ Park, Newcastle (England)
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