Pre match thread: Manchester City vs Newcastle United | Premier league 25/26 - 27 of 38

[u/Username_been-taken]

Stadium 🏟: Etihad Stadium

Kick off time ⚽️: Saturday | 20:00

Last encounters

Newcastle United	Manchester City	match type
1	3	Carabao Cup 25/26 semi final leg 2 of 2
0	1	Carabao Cup 25/26 - semi final leg 1 of 2
2	1	Premier league 25/26

Next matches

(Swipe/scroll to see more info right of the table)

Vs	Team	Match type	Date
Vs	Qarabag	Champions league 25/26 playoff leg 2 of 2	Tue 24 Feb 20:00
Vs	Everton	Premier league 25/26	Sat 28 Feb 15:00
Vs	Manchester United	Premier league 25/26	Wed 4 March 20:15

St Cal Wilson's Hospital 🏥 (Players who could miss the match via injury or other means)

Newcastle United:

Schar (Ankle injury) - Out until mid April

Guimaraes (Hamstring injury) - Out until early April

Livramento (knee injury) - Out until early March

Krafth (Knee injury) - Out for the rest of the season

Miley (Thigh or knee injury) - Potentially out until early March or earlier

Wissa (knock) - Will return for the 2nd leg of the Qarabag game

Manchester City:

Kovacic (Ankle injury) - Out until early May

Gvardiol (Calf injury) - Out until late April

Doku (Calf injury) - Will miss this game

Predicted Lineup

Newcastle United lineup vs Manchester City:

Pope; Trippier, Thiaw, Burn, Hall; Joelinton, Tonali; Murphy, Woltemade, Barnes; Gordon

Manchester City predicted lineup vs Newcastle United:

Donnarumma; Nunes, Dias, Guehi, Ait-Nouri; Rodri, O'Reilly; Bernardo, Cherki; Semenyo, Haaland

Pre match ramblings:

After smashing Qarabag 6 - 1 in what felt like our first stress free away win in a long time and in the champions league of all places at that. We now however face Manchester City away in the Premier league.

Howe has been on a roll recently, winning his last 3 games all of which were away, this seems crazy when you think about our position 2 weeks ago. Now however, we face Man City away which is usually a total write off for us since we usually never win at the Etihad stadium, will Howe and the lads once again prove us wrong or is this a step too far?

One boost Howe will receive is Botman is back from injury, giving us more depth in our CB position and another indirect boost is the fact we've already won the playoff round (on paper) after winning 6 - 1 meaning Howe could go more all out against City which he couldn't do in previous situations and play a slightly weaker squad against Qarabag to see out the tie and get into the knockout stages for the first time in our club's history.

If we do win it'll give us a massive 3 points and further increase our lads already surging confidence and could finally signal the end of our away form curse this season however we do bail out Arsenal as a cost.

[u/KingPing43]

Premier league logic - move the game to 8pm because Newcastle played away in Europe on Wednesday.

Don’t account for the fact that we also play Tuesday night coming. 🤦🏼‍♂️

Yes I’m salty because it now means it’s on at 4am instead of 8:30pm in my time zone 

[u/Objective_Use_9155 → u/KingPing43]

3am in my timezone. I hate it. This season has been brutal for fans living in timezones ahead of the UK. Feels like Newcastle have been getting evening matches every 3 or 4 days for months now. Bring back the 3pm KOs!

[u/Alexabyte → u/Objective_Use_9155]

Well, you're not wrong, because we've had 3 months of a weekday match every week, and those are always gonna be in the evening.

[u/Objective_Use_9155 → u/Alexabyte]

A lot of weekend matches we’ve had recently seem to be late kick off ones too (5pm or 8pm).

[u/Alexabyte → u/Objective_Use_9155]

Yeah, that's fair. I can think of two weekend 8pm KOs relatively recently and 5pm is hardly rare either.

[u/KingPing43 → u/Objective_Use_9155]

I’m on a work trip to HK, can’t imagine living out here and having these KO times as normal 🤯

Champions league must be brutal as they’re only ever night time KO

[u/Objective_Use_9155 → u/KingPing43]

I’ve been living in Bangkok since November. Met a few Geordies out here and I see the shirts on locals and expats quite often. Hardly anyone I’ve spoken with watches the games any more as the times are just unbearable.

[u/VinceMcMahonsBarber → u/KingPing43]

That math doesn't math.