The game at Villa Park will bring more optimism for the home fans than the previous season after their opening day victory away at Stoke. However, Newcastle’s performance will have given them a lot to feel positive about despite the 2-0 loss at home to Champions Manchester City.
Paul Lambert has new signing Carlos Sanchez to call upon after he has been training all week with the side. Lambert actually has no injury concerns from last week’s game and also has Joe Cole and Jores Okore back from injury both of whom are expected to feature in the matchday squad for the lunch time kick off.
Alan Pardew has Siem De Jong back from injury and as a result is expected to make his competitive debut for the Toon after his impressive pre-season. Rumours surrounding Cheick Tiote’s departure could be a reason he’s expected to be left out but Newcastle say he is sidelined for now, however, Facundo Ferreyra is expected to be in the squad.
Meetings between these two sides have often ended with Newcastle being the happier of the sides. Villa haven’t beaten Newcastle in their last 6 meetings and have lost their last two games at Villa Park to the Tyneside team. However, early season games can often be a contrary to the form book with both sides looking for early points. Villa will look to continue their good start after an impressive performance away at Stoke gave them the 3 points they desperately needed. Newcastle on the other hand will be looking to get off the mark after their efforts came to no avail in their loss to Man City. Something that will give the visitors hope is that Villa have never won their opening 2 games of the season. However, with Newcastle suffering 5 successive away defeats in the run in of last season they will be keen to make sure that this isn’t their 6 successive game.
Villa’s home record was pretty poor last season and then never really managed to get on the front foot of games due to their preference of the counter attack. This benefited them against teams like Man City, who they beat, but it did mean they very rarely got results against teams around them. The debut of Siem de Jong has been long awaited with many in Newcastle putting him in the same mould as Yohan Cabaye. His creative influence could cause Villa problems in what could be a cagey affair. Despite Villa winning their opening game I can see that after last week’s performance Newcastle may have enough to get an away win so my prediction is 2-1 to the Toon.
