Next up for Eddie Howe and Newcastle United, is Nottingham Forest away at the City Ground?
What could possibly go wrong?
I say this because so many indicators point to a Newcastle United victory.
Eddie Howe’s Newcastle team have won every match they have played at the City Ground. Three Premier League matches that have seen United score eight goals in the trio of PL victories.
On top of those league successes, we also had the dramatic Carabao Cup win in August 2025 despite going behind in the penalty shootout, that the first step in an incredible run that saw Newcastle United win the trophy with further victories against the likes of Chelsea, Arsenal (twice) and Liverpool, plus AFC Wimbledon and Brentford as well.
Newcastle United have actually never lost a single Premier League match away at Nottingham Forest.
Indeed, you have to go all the way back to May 1987 since NUFC lost any top flight match at the City Ground.
In the 2022/23 season, the six points Newcastle took off Forest played a significant role in helping Eddie Howe and his players qualify for the Champions League. Even more key in the 2024/25 season when NUFC did the same (six points off Forest and qualified for the Champions League), especially when you consider that Forest only finished one point behind Newcastle United.
You can add in the small matter that Newcastle United will have had eight days to recover and prepare for Sunday’s match after last Saturday’s 3-1 home win over Brighton. In contrast, Forest will have played two huge matches since then, on Monday they had to travel to Chelsea in the hope of getting points to prevent potential relegation, then tonight (Thursday) they are away at Aston Villa in the second leg of their Europa League semi-final.
As I said earlier, what could possibly go wrong?
The fact is that as football fans, we tend to focus far more on negative indicators, reasons to believe that we are definitely not going to win, almost certainly lose. It is like when we are facing a former player and even if they have only scored once in the ten games against us since they left St James’ Park, we are convinced they are bound to do so again.
It is a bit of a defence mechanism as well, fear/predict the worst and then if it does actually happen, you haven’t had your hopes raised too much in advance.
If an opposition side haven’t won for a ridiculous number of matches then you convince yourself that balance of probability means that they are going to win against Newcastle. Likewise, if Newcastle are on a long run of positive results then we become more and more convinced that surely it has to end soon.
The media of course are always more than willing to feed on negative Newcastle United themes as well.
Ahead of the Brighton match so much coverage given to how they are a real bogey team for Newcastle United in recent years. Yet now Eddie Howe has a Premier League St James’ Park record against the Seagulls of played five, won three, drawn one and lost one. Plus, the 4-1 win in May 2023 was effectively the huge moment, the huge win, that confirmed top four and Champions League qualification.
Bournemouth another bogey team supposedly and yet in matches at St James’ Park before last month’s home defeat to them, the last seven SJP matches against the Cherries had seen four United wins, two draws and just the one Bournemouth victory on Tyneside since consecutive defeats in 2016 and 2017 to Eddie Howe’s Bournemouth side.
As always with these things, so much depends on which stats you use and how you want to present them. For example, people saying Eddie Howe has never won with Newcastle at home to Bournemouth, conveniently ignores the League Cup win in 2022/23 (on the way to Wembley) and the thrilling FA Cup win for NUFC only this January gone.
With my Forest stats above, I conveniently miss out the small fact that Newcastle have only played three Premier League matches at the City Ground these last 27 years AND during that time period NUFC lost twice there in the Championship and also a League Cup defeat in 2018.
Anyway, good luck to Nottingham Forest tonight at Aston Villa, I hope they get through to the Europa League final. That is after having had to play 30+ minutes extra time and then penalties to leave them shattered both physically and mentally, to help Newcastle United as much as possible on Sunday.
When looking for as many positives as possible before Sunday, I also have ignored the facts that Forest have only lost three of their last 15 Premier League matches, have only lost once at home in the league in 2026, plus played a second team (seven changes) at Chelsea and yet still trounced them 3-1 at Stamford Bridge.
Keep looking at the positives though and last weekend Newcastle United kicked off a new winning run (after five defeats in a row…).