In a month packed with Champions League, Carabao Cup and ‘Big Six’ clashes, our next game is perhaps our biggest of the season so far.
The first Tyne-Wear derby in the Premier League for close to a decade takes place on Sunday at the Stadium of Light, and it feels like it could easily go either way.
There’s pressure on the team to not only bounce back from the frustrating midweek draw with Bayer Leverkusen, but ensure that we continue our rise up the Premier League table, whilst also condemning the Mackems to their first home loss of the campaign.
It’s a fixture that Howe and much of the team have got past experience in, and he has issued a rallying cry to the entire team to deliver a much-needed big result.
Speaking ahead of Sunday’s derby, Eddie Howe expressed his immense desire to win the game; for the club and the city of Newcastle.
The boss also encouraged his players to get into the right headspace ahead of what will be quite a tense afternoon on Wearside, insisting we must be bang up for the occasion but not so high that it impacts our game plan and performance.
“I want to do the club, the city, our people proud,” Howe told BBC Radio Newcastle’s Matthew Raisbeck.
“It will be difficult I think, these games always are because there’s a lot of emotion, there’s a lot of challenges for the players to overcome to make sure we enter the pitch in the right frame of mind and where we absolutely need to be, which is focused on how we play and what we need to do.”
“The arousal levels are absolutely key: you can be too high, you can be too low. I don’t think there’ll be many too low in preparation got this game, but finding that place where the players play at their best is my challenge.”
“And of course you don’t want the players to overthink things, it’s a very important game, but we’ve gotta focus on our performance, so all these things will be important.”
If you could sum up our form so far in the 2025/26 season, it would be that we’re consistently inconsistent.
Often failing to string together positive enough results, in the last few weeks alone we’ve beaten Manchester City only to lose to Marseille the very next game, and beaten Everton to then throwing a away all three points against Spurs.
That game against the Toffees remains our only away win of the league campaign, so statistically we are going to the Stadium of Light as a slight underdog in that regard, with the Black Cats unbeaten at home in the league so far.
But, with 10 points from a possible 12 in our last four league games and a second half comeback at Leverkusen in midweek, we can take positives from what was so nearly a huge win in Europe.
A captain’s performance from Bruno, coupled with Anthony Gordon on his recent resurgence and the pair of Lewis Hall and Tino Livramento continuing to do what they do best, and there’s no reason we can’t leave Wearside with a win.
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