Game on! Stoke v Newcastle.

After two weeks off it's back to Premier League action for The Magpies as they take on The Potters of Stoke City at the Britannia Stadium this afternoon.

A brief 90 minutes of football today will take is into yet another two week break, which is why it's important to try and get a positive result this afternoon at what is one of the leagues toughest grounds to visit. Both teams could very easily get sucked into the relegation mire, but I would suggest that Stoke have the greater need for a win whereas Newcastle could probably just about settle for a point that will keep us ticking over until the Wolves game at the start of April.

It isn't looking pretty with regard to injury news either although there was no official confirmation that any one of Joey Barton, Jose Enrique or Jonas Gutierrez have been ruled out in the build up to the match. It's looks as though at least one, if not all, of them will miss the match as I speculated in my match match preview.

Being a Saturday 3pm game means that the game will not be live on TV, well not in the UK anyway. This will mean that many people are relying on streaming the game if they are to watch it. Reliability of streams has been crap on the whole recently, but if you do manage to find a decent one then please feel free to throw a link to it in the comments section below.

I guess all that is left for me to say is that I hope we all enjoy the game and get the result at the end of it. I've pre-written this as I'm at the match myself, so the team news has today been supplied by Moreno.

Howay the lads!

Team news....

Stoke: Begovic; Wilson, Shawcross, Huth, Higginbotham; Pennant, Delap, Whelan, Etherington; Jones, Walters

Subs: Sorensen, Collins, Fuller, Pugh, Diao, Whitehead, Wilkinson.

Newcastle: Steve Harper, Danny Simpson, Mike Williamson, Sol Campbell, Fabricio Coloccini, Jose Enrique. Joey Barton, Cheik Tiote, Kevin Nolan. Shola Ameobi, Peter Lovenkrands.

Subs: Tim Krul, Steven Taylor, Danny Guthrie, Shane Ferguson, Jonas Gutierrez, Shefki Kuqi, Nile Ranger.

Newcastle go to a 3-5-2 formation. Sol Campbell comes in to replace Steven Taylor who drops to the bench. Jose Enrique and Joey Barton pass late fitness tests to give the starting 11 a much needed boost as Leon Best is absent due to an injury he picked up in training on Thursday.

HOWAY THE LADS !