Newcastle v Bristol City - Match Preview

Saturday sees Bristol City visit St James’ park in a traditional 3 o’clock kick off. Newcastle will be looking to exploit the opportunity to go 4 points clear at the top of the table, well at least until half 5 where we will be hoping for Reading to beat Brighton. Bristol City will be a side coming looking to take any form of result to help lift them out of the relegation zone, languishing in the 21st position.

Following Monday night’s win in what was arguably the most anticipated game of the season, beating Villa 2-0, we will be hoping to continue with a bit of form and brush the opposition away. Granted, that we still won Monday without really going up past second gear, a strong performance will be required, something that seems to have gone missing when playing at home.

We will definitely be looking to make it 8 games unbeaten in the league and looking at the game neutrally, it would be expected for that to happen. Bristol come into this game on the back of 2 defeats, however their performance will go either one of two ways. The players could either recognise this as being their biggest game of the season and give a strong performance, running themselves into the ground and being well-up for a fight, or heads could be down - if that’s the case, there’s a very strong possibility that we will easily brush them aside with the abundance of talent we have in the ranks.

Team wise, I would expect it to be the same as Monday night, bar starting Mitrovic over the injured Gayle,. Mitro stepped his game up Monday and played a vital part in the victory, getting involved with just about everything. I’d expect the defence to stay the same due to the strength of it at the minute, most noticeably Clark and Yedlin being our standout performers at the back. In the midfield I'd expect Colback to retain his position for the third game running, much to the annoyance of some fans and the rest of the team should follow standard procedure with the likes of Ritchie and Diame.

Game wise I think that it will go as anticipated on paper; I'm fully expecting us to brush them aside, bagging a few goals. The defence of our opposition seem to be known for conceding a lot and with Shelvey in the middle, hopefully running the show, I’d expect balls to be played into Mitrovic, allowing others players to advance and play off him.

Confidence should be high going into this and players seem will be aware that it is vital to win this to keep our charge at the top going, especially looking ahead to the away fixture to Brighton on Tuesday night.

Looking at the Bristol City side, I don’t see where the goals are going to come from, especially with them missing young starlet and top goal scorer Tammy Abraham.

Predicted Starting XI: Darlow, Yedlin, Clark, Lascelles, Dummett, Shelvey, Colback, Gouffran, Ritchie, Diame, Mitrovic.

Predicted Result: 3-0 in our favour.