· Last season's game - Newcastle 0 Spurs 2, 13.08.17
· This week - last year
· What happened in the Premier League on Matchday One 2017-18
· See the current injury list for all Premier League Teams
· All the Spurs Stats you could hope for here! THFC6061 Sports Stats

Full Record of Spurs -v- Newcastle United

 
Prem         Pl   W   D   L    For-Ag  Pts
Home         23  13   1   9    36 -28  40
Away         23   6   5  12    30 -45  23
==========================================
Total(Prem)  46  19   6  21    66 -73  63
==========================================
Lge Div 1
Home         43  24   7  12    87 -48  59
Away         43  15  14  14    70 -76  45
==========================================
Total(Div 1) 86  39  21  26   157 -124 109
==========================================
Lge Div 2
Home          6   1   3   2     6 - 7   5
Away          6   3   0   3     6 - 4   6
==========================================
Total(Div 2) 12   4   3   5    12 -11  11
==========================================
Total(Prem)  46  19   6  21    66 -73  63
Total(Div 1) 86  39  21  26   157 -124 109
Total(Div 2) 12   4   3   5    12 -11  11
==========================================
Grand Total 144  62  30  52   235 -208 182
==========================================

Last Six Premier League results:-

Newcastle  -    WLLLLW

Newcastle  2-1    Arsenal
Everton    1-0    Newcastle
Newcastle  0-1    West Brom
Watford    2-1    Newcastle
Spurs      1-0    Newcastle
Newcastle  3-0    Chelsea

Spurs      -    LDWLWW
           
Spurs      1-3    Man City
Brighton   1-1    Spurs
Spurs      2-0    Watford
West Brom  1-0    Spurs
Spurs      1-0    Newcastle
Spurs      5-4    Leicester

Final Positions 2017-18 season

Pos            P  W  D  L   F-A   GD  Pts
 3. Spurs     38 23  8  7  74-36  38   77
10. Newcastle 38 12  8 18  39-47  -8   44

Unhappiness in both camps

So, here we are at the start of the new season, and there is unhappiness in both camps. Newcastle players went on a form of strike earlier in the week, due to claims of unpaid bonuses due from last season. The players were refusing to comply with the club's contractual obligation to the TV companies to film their green screen walk-ons to camera. Whether and how that has been resolved, I don't know. I do know that Newcastle risked having to pay a fine. The match is being televised here on SKY tomorrow lunch-time.

Newcastle have made signings, but probably not to the level desired by their fans and manager Rafa Benitez. Newcastle have yet to break their record signing fee which was £16 million for Michael Owen in 2005! It looks like Rafa is going to stick it out and honour his contract until next summer, but he will surely be looking for pastures new next year.

Chelsea's 22 year old Brazilian midfielder Kenedy, who spent the latter part of last season on loan with Newcastle, has signed on a season-long loan. Goalkeeper Dubravka, who was on loan from Sparta Prague was signed on a full-time basis in the summer.

Other signings for "The Toon" include Swansea's Ki Sung-yong who came on a free transfer at the end of June. Ki is 29 and remains a regular for South Korea for whom he played in two of their three World Cup games in Russia. Another Swansea player who was only signed yesterday on the early deadline day was full back Federico Fernandez for a £6 million fee. In July Newcastle signed Swiss International defender Fabian Schar for a bargain £3 million from Deportivo. Schar is 26 and played in two of Switzerland's World Cup games this summer.

Newcastle had a bid for West Brom's Salomon Rondon rejected, but they have now signed him on loan, with Dwight Gayle going the other way - also on loan. Finally the signing was confirmed last week of Japanese striker/midfielder Yoshinori Muto - signed from Mainz. His only World Cup appearance was in the 1-0 defeat by Poland in Japan's controversial last group game. The fee was £11 million.

An army of Spurs fans will travel to the North-east for this Saturday lunch-time game, but most of them will be sorely upset (to say the least) regarding Spurs' failure to strengthen their squad whilst clubs likely to finish above them (Man City and Liverpool) and others competing for Champions League places (such as Chelsea) have continued to splash the cash. Obviously, with the commitment to our new stadium, Spurs cannot stretch to the massive fees paid for players such as the new Liverpool and Chelsea goalkeepers. Spurs fans have been asked to stump up increased and in some cases exorbitant season ticket prices, all of which amount to more than that spent by the club on transfers this summer.

On this subject Mauricio Pochettino said at yesterday's Press conference, "It's difficult to understand for people that Tottenham didn't sign or sell players, but sometimes in football you need to behave differently. If we are happy with our squad and cannot improve it, sometimes it's better to keep our squad together."

I'll take City and Liverpool to be one and two in this season's Premier League, but I still think we will be scrapping it out for the remaining two places. We might have no signings, but we do have 9 World Cup semi-finalists (including a winner!) and indeed three other World Cup players on our books. Bearing in mind players such as Alderweireld, Rose, Dembele and even Wanyama (not a World Cup player) were being linked with rumours of departure, we should be grateful none of our senior players have left. Mind you, the transfer window for European clubs to buy remains open till the end of the month.

The big question is how many of our returning semi-finalists are going to be match fit this week? The team news was not good with Wanyama (knee), Lamela (muscle injury), Foyth (thigh), Carter-Vickers (groin) all sidelined and Harry Winks and Josh Onomah also not ready to step up to the plate. Certain starters have to be Davinson Sanchez, Ben Davies and Christian Eriksen and Son Heung-min who leaves to take part in the Asian Games after this game. Moussa Sissoko did miss some of the pre-season with injury, but it would appear he is available, and in the circumstances likely to start against his former team. That would boost the atmosphere! After that, your guess is as good as mine regarding starters. 21 year old Luka Amos had an impressive pre-season and would be favourite of our youngsters to make his Premier League debut. I would also expect Lucas Moura to start.

Harry Kane became a father for the second time this week. I believe the baby had been due a little later this week, so perhaps all was planned to enable Harry to play tomorrow. As we all know, he has yet to score a Premier League goal in August. Harry made his Premier League debut away to Newcastle on August 18th 2012, when he came on as substitute for the last five minutes in a 2-1 defeat.

It is not so long ago that Spurs beat Newcastle 4-0 at St. James' Park. With Tim Sherwood in temporary charge of the team Adebayor scored two, Paulinho scored, and Nacer Chadli scored a late cracker. Spurs matched the margin of that win with a 5-1 in August 1959. Cliff Jones scored a hat-trick and Johnny Brooks got the other two. George Eastham scored Newcastle's goal. Eastham went on to play for Arsenal and Stoke and was a member of England's 1966 22-man World Cup squad. Eastham, who will be 82 next month, emigrated to South Africa, and became Chairman of the South African Arsenal Supporters' Club.

Another big away win for Spurs here came in January 1975. The score was 5-2. Alfie Conn scored a hat-trick (his only one for Spurs), and John Duncan and Cyril Knowles also scored. The 74-75 season was the one where Spurs managed crucial end of season wins against Chelsea and Leeds. Conn would also score against Chelsea and famously sat upon the ball in the centre circle during play when we beat Leeds 4-2! After that Newcastle win, Spurs managed only one point in nine games before finding winning form in 5 of their last 7 games.

As for the score tomorrow, I've let my heart rule, as is so often the case. My head says draw, but I have gone for anoher 2-0 win - just like last year!

Did you know? - Spurs' first competitive visit to St James' Park Newcastle was in an FA Cup second round replay in February 1905. We had drawn the home game 1-1 but lost the replay 4-0. We were a Southern League team then, of course. It took Spurs 9 attempts before they gained their first ever win against "The Magpies". That was a home game played in November 1912 with Jimmy Cantrell scoring the solitary goal. Our first away win at Newcastle came in November 1921. The score was 2-0 and the goals came from Jimmy Seed and Alex Lindsay.

Our first Premier League match referee of the new season will be Martin Atkinson. Somewhat surprisingly, we only saw Mr. Atkinson once in the middle all last season. That was for our away draw against Watford last December. England had no referees officiating in this summer's World Cup, but Martin Atkinson did go to Russia - on a bike! This was a gruelling three week 1700 mile trip to Kaliningrad, which led to a total of £60,000 being raised for various charities. Mr. Atkinson's first match in charge of Spurs was back in August 2005 when we beat Middlesbrough 2-0. He was also the match referee for that Newcastle game in August 2012.

· "It was Twenty Years ago today!" - Spurs lost their opening game of the 1998-99 season at Wimbledon on 15th August. Don't forget to follow the link on that page to Brian Judson's informative preview.

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