Steve McClaren has just announced the Newcastle side for the tough game at Stamford Bridge this afternoon and as we suspected – it’s an unchanged side from the one that did so well last Saturday in beating West Brom 1-0.

And the subs bench is strengthened significantly from last week with Lascelles, Colback and Manu Riviere all coming back.

Colback and Riviere are back from injury and Lascelles is back from his one game suspension.

So Rolando Aarons who had a good game at left back last week keeps his place and keeps Jack Colback on the bench.

Teams:

Chelsea (4-2-3-1): Thibaut Courtois; Branislav Ivanovic, Gary Cahill, John Terry (c), Cesar Azpilicueta; Nemanja Matic, Cesc Fabregas; Pedro, Willian, Eden Hazard; Diego Costa
Substitutes: Asmir Begovic, Baba Rahman, John Obi Mikel, Rueben Loftus-Cheek, Bertrand Traore, Kenedy, Loic Remy

Newcastle (4-2-3-1): Rob Elliot; Daryl Janmaat, Steven Taylor, Fabricio Coloccini (c), Rolando Aarons; Cheick Tiote, Jonjo Shelvey; Moussa Sissoko, Georginio Wijnaldum, Andros Townsend; Aleksandar Mitrovic
Substitutes: Karl Darlow, Jamaal Lascelles, Jack Colback, Henri Saivet, Ayoze Perez, Emmanuel Riviere, Seydou Doumbia

Referee: Roger East (Wiltshire)

The weekend did not start off well for Newcastle with Sunderland getting a surprise but deserved 2-1 home win against an off-color Manchester United side – and the Black Cats and are now just one point behind us.

At the time of writing West Brom are also winning 1-0 at Everton and could possibly get a surprise win there this afternoon – after we easily beat them last week.

It will now be very important that Newcastle now get something out of this game today if we are to remain out of the bottom three for the next two and a half weeks.

This is what manager Steve McClaren has said about the game today:

“It’s a problem we’ve had all season.” “It is down to the way we play – we tend to play on the front foot, which is good when you’re at home, but away we’ve been exposed and haven’t ground out enough results.

“If two or three of our away games had been draws then we would have ground out a few more points and we would be in a slightly better situation.”

“It is something we need to address because we can’t afford to rely on our home form, because then the pressure on those games will just become too much.”

“In our home games we are starting to get a consistency in our performance and the way we play. “We need to start transferring that to our away games and picking up points away from home – we owe it to the fans.”

Less than one in three fans think we can get the win today at Stamford Bridge.

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Howay The Lads!!