The Magpies may be flying high in league this season but they'll plenty of reasons to worry about the arrival of Sunderland. Since they cruised past the Black Cats at the Stadium of Light a lot of things have changed for their bitter rivals, mostly thanks to the arrival of Martin O'Neill.

Derby Veteran

O'Neill is certainly no stranger to these types of high pressure, high stake games where local pride is on the line. When the derby veteran was at Celtic he won 16 out 27 Old Firm matches and only lost 8 but even more impressive is that while he was the Villa manager they always beat Birmingham City, something that the fans dearly missed last season when The Blues dumped their side out of the League Cup in the quarter finals. What's even more worrying for Alan Pardew and his squad is that O'Neill has a knack of achieving something special on his landmark birthdays.

When he was 25 he won promotion with Nottingham Forest, at 40 he took Wycombe out of the conference for the first time in their history and he won the League Cup with Leicester when he was 45.

Both sides bitter

The recent success of both these clubs has been tarnished slightly in the last week. Newcastle threw away a 2-0 home lead against struggling Wolves while Sunderland were outclassed, out-fought and embarrassed at the Hawthorns by West Brom. But the Toon army are already delighted as two of their key players, Fabricio Coloccini and Tim Krul, committed their long-term futures to the club and they have their lethal strikers Papiss Cisse and Demba Ba on display. Although Ba will be looking to end his run of three league games without a goal.

The Black Cats will be hoping to end their run of 14 league matches against the Magpies without a win and on top of that they might have to cope without their biggest goal threat, Stephane Sessegnon.

Tough to call

This game looks set to be a class derby in the making as tensions are running high on both sides but with someone as crafty and experienced as O’Neill behind his team you wouldn’t bet against his side edging out a memorable victory.