ยท 8 August 2025, 18:38
Newcastle United are in action on their home turf tonight as Espanyol pay a visit to St James' Park for the Magpies' penultimate pre-season friendly.
The Sela Weekender kicks off at 7:30 pm tonight (Friday) live on newcastleunited.com with Espanyol first up to face Newcastle United before Atletico Madrid compete with the Magpies for the Sela Cup on Saturday afternoon.
With two games in as many days, Eddie Howe is having to choose his teams carefully, and he's gone with a very unfamiliar-looking but fairly strong side tonight.
New signings Aaron Ramsdale and Park Seung-soo will make their St James' Park debuts from the start.
Aaron Ramsdale and Park Seung-soo will be hoping to make an impression at St James' Park
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It will be Ramsdale's first sighting as a Newcastle United player, while it's Park's home debut and first start for the club after two impressive cameos in his home country of Korea.
Looking at the player selection, it looks as though Newcastle could be lining up with five at the back and two in the middle, with only Lewis Miley and captain Bruno Guimaraes recognised central midfielders, although there is a chance that Lewis Hall could move to the middle of the park, having started life as a midfielder.
Park Seung Soo and Jacob Murphy will flank Will Osula up front
There are some lesser-spotted stars on the bench tonight
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The bench is filled with reserve players on the cusp of the first team, with the likes of Garang Kuol and Alfie Harrison called up.
Trevan Sanusi, who impressed in pre-season last year, is also on the bench and could get some minutes this evening.
There are plenty of absentees in tonight's squad as Eddie Howe will be saving them for tomorrow against Atletico Madrid. Let's see if we can get our first win of pre-season (we're still not counting Carlisle because they could have just made that scoreline up).