All 78 footballers to play for Newcastle United and Sunderland ahead of Tyne-Wear derby

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Newcastle United and Sunderland will renew hostilities in the 2025-26 season as the Tyne-Wear derby returns to the Premier League.

One of the fiercest derbies in English football, Newcastle United haven’t taken on their old foes Sunderland in the Premier League since 2016.

Eddie Howe did guide Newcastle to a 3-0 win over the Black Cats in the FA Cup third round in 2024, but that’s been the only Tyne-Wear derby in nearly a decade.

Newcastle haven’t beaten Sunderland in the top flight since a 1-0 win in 2011, either, so they will be desperate to win both fixtures in the 2025-26 season.

Though it’s such a fierce rivalry with no love lost from either side, there is a surprisingly huge crossover of players who have played at St. James’ Park and the Stadium of Light.

Here are all 78 of them.

• Tyne-Wear derby: Newcastle United record vs Sunderland ahead of the first Premier League encounters in a decade

Who has played for Newcastle United and Sunderland?

Here’s the full list of all 78 footballers who have been signed for both Newcastle and Sunderland, though some didn’t actually make an appearance for one of the sides, like Steve Harper.

Additionally, some of the players are from so long ago that no reliable data on their appearances and goals is available.

There are even six players who have managed to register over 100 appearances for both clubs. Jack Colback is the most recent to achieve the feat, while Barry Venison, Pop Robson, Albert McInroy, Andy McCrombie and Jeff Clarke also did in their playing days.

It’s perhaps even more surprising that massive Newcastle legends like Shay Given, Harper and several others crossed the divide, but fans don’t seem to have held it against them.

Jack Milburn twice played for Sunderland

Speaking of Toon icons that played for Sunderland, you don’t get much bigger or more shocking than the one and only Jackie Milburn.

Perhaps Newcastle’s greatest ever player actually turned out for the club’s biggest foes twice during the 1944-45 season against Gateshead.

However, he was only playing as a guest, as a system was put in place during World War II that allowed footballers to make guest appearances at other clubs.

The managers who have taken charge of Newcastle and Sunderland

Though there are lots and lots of players to be on the books of Newcastle and Sunderland, only two managers have taken charge of both clubs.

Both are from the modern era, too, in the forms of Sam Allardyce and Steve Bruce.

Allardyce left Bolton Wanderers in 2007 to take over at Newcastle, but only lasted until January.

He became the first man to manage Newcastle and Sunderland when he was hired by the Mackems in 2015 and successfully kept them in the Premier League from a dire position, earning himself the England job.

Bruce, on the other hand, managed Sunderland first between 2009-2011 and was controversially hired as Rafa Benitez’s replacement in 2019, as he finally got the chance to manage his boyhood club.

Newcastle fans were fuming about Bruce’s appointment, but he lasted more than two years before being sacked by new owners PIF and replaced by Howe in 2021.

Finally, Bob Stokoe won the FA Cup as a player with Newcastle in 1955 and then won it as Sunderland manager in 1973, as well as promotion to Division One in 1976.