Gary Neville, Roy Keane and Ian Wright have all predicted that Newcastle United will pick up three points against Chelsea on Saturday afternoon.
Newcastle return to Premier League action this weekend against Chelsea at St James’ Park and will be looking to keep their hopes of successive years of Champions League football alive.
The four Premier League legends made their predictions for some of this weekend’s fixtures on The Overlap and are claiming that Newcastle will bounce back after a poor defeat to Bournemouth.
PL legends predict Newcastle vs Chelsea
Newcastle looked tired and out of ideas against Bournemouth, something we’re not used to seeing from an Eddie Howe team who have made their name playing high intensity and high pressing football.
Instead, this stretched squad struggled to keep up with the pace of Andoni Iraola’s side and, when the first Dominic Solanke goal inevitably went in, the team didn’t look confident in finding an equaliser at all.
Howe will have welcomed the international break to let his players rest and hopefully get a few back from injury, but he’ll also be wanting to put this defeat behind him as quickly as possible with a victory in the next game.
Roy Keane and Ian Wright were tasked with giving a combined prediction for the game and eventually came to a scoreline of 2-1 to Newcastle.
On their prediction Keane said: “3-1 or 3-2 to Newcastle. Chelsea away from home, they’ve obviously had a brilliant game against Manchester City.”
Wright then added: “I don’t know, I’m not sure. Let’s give Chelsea something, 2-1.”
Neville was given the same task, but were more confident in a comfortable victory for Newcastle over Chelsea.
Neville said: “2-0 to Newcastle for us. They aren’t scoring up there, it’s a long way.”
Chelsea starting to find their feet
Under their new ownership, Chelsea have really struggled to get a good run of form going after completely overhauling the squad in about 12 months.
The Blues have spent almost £1bn since Boehly arrived in 2022 and are only now starting to find some cohesion in the squad under new boss Mauricio Pochettino.
With eight goals in their last two games against Manchester City and Tottenham, Chelsea will arrive in Newcastle full of confidence and hope to break their streak of four consecutive wins with a clean sheet at St James’ Park.
As Keane and Neville hint at, however, Chelsea do have a poor record playing away at Newcastle where the homes fans will again be looking to act as the 12th man on the pitch, which may well be needed after the amount of injuries Newcastle have suffered.
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