Tottenham continue their pursuit of a top-four place with a difficult trip to take on Newcastle United at St James’ Park for Saturday’s early kick-off.
Kick-off time and TV channel
Newcastle vs Tottenham will kick off at 12.30 p.m. BST on Saturday the 13th of April, with coverage available on TNT Sports 1 and TNT Sports Ultimate.
The coverage will include pre and post-match analysis from the TNT Sports punditry team, with the 90 minutes from St James’ Park sandwiched in between.
Read on for our look ahead to this big game…
Newcastle team news
Newcastle have had a difficult season with injuries, and they continue to have to struggle without several big names out of action.
Sven Botman, Jamaal Lascelles and Miguel Almiron are all out with knee injuries. At the same time, there are other issues in the squad as well, with a variety of problems affecting other senior figures of Eddie Howe’s side.
There’s also Callum Wilson (chest), Tino Livramento (ankle), Nick Pope (shoulder), Joelinton (thigh), while then all three of Matt Targett, Kieran Trippier and Joe Willock are all out with lower body injuries.
Possible Newcastle XI: Martin Dubravka; Dan Burn, Fabian Schar, Lewis Hall, Emil Krafth; Bruno Guimaraes, Sean Longstaff, Harvey Barnes; Jacob Murphy, Alexander Isak, Anthony Gordon
Tottenham team news
Spurs have a relatively clean bill of health, but there are some absentees from Ange Postecoglou’s squad.
Both Richarlison and Manor Solomon are out with knee injuries, while Ryan Sessegnon and Fraser Forster have respective thigh and ankleinjuries that are likely to keep them out for the rest of the season.
Possible XI: Guglielmo Vicario; Micky van de Ven, Cristian Romero, Destiny Udogie, Pedro Porro; Yves Bissouma, Rodrigo Bentancur; James Maddison, Dejan Kulusevski, Timo Werner; Son Heung-min
H2H: History suggests a Magpies win
Newcastle and have often played out some of the great Premier League thrillers, with goals almost always guaranteed when these two teams meet.
It’s the Magpies with the slight upper-hand overall, as they’ve won 74 games to Tottenham’ 61, while there have been 34 draws.
Spurs beat Newcastle 4-1 earlier this season, but they were thrashed 6-1 on their last visit to St James’ Park last season, so they’ll be looking for revenge this time.
In fairness, the Magpies are not really the team they were last season, when they finished in the top four and had a much better campaign than Spurs, but the roles are reserved now, with the north Londoners coming into this game as the slight favourites as they look to get back into the Champions League.
Newcastle vs Tottenham prediction
These games are often unpredictable, and neither team is the most consistent, but you’d probably have to say Spurs are the favourites here as they go into the game in better form, with fewer injuries and generally more confidence than their opponents, so this could well be a pretty comfortable win for Postecoglou’s men in the end.
Prediction: Tottenham to win by at least 2 goals.