**When the Premier League fixtures were announced, the first thing every Toon fan did was scour the list for Newcastle United vs Sunderland.**
Plans will have been in place for months for this one as groups of fans discuss what time they’ll be turning out to get ‘on it’ ahead of the game. It’s no surprise the kick-off has been set for midday for this very reason.
The [Tyne-Wear derby](https://www.nufcblog.co.uk/2026/03/19/eddie-howe-makes-sunderland-demand-after-newcastles-7-2-beating-in-barcelona/) isn’t a match. It’s an event’ albeit a nervous one. It’s not 90 minutes, it’s an entire weekend. It’s the whole of next week. It means everything.
While the game means so much to fans, we have to remember that much of the squad and staff at the clubs aren’t from around these parts, and while they’ll have derbies in their respective home towns, do any of them really stack up to this one? Unlikely.
So the gathered media set out to make sure that Eddie Howe, and indeed his players, were fully aware of what this fixture means to the city.
Howe was quizzed relentlessly on Friday morning over whether he understood the meaning of the fixture and why fans were so angry after the reverse fixture: a 1-0 defeat on Wearside in December.
It does seem that Howe is fully aware of the significance of today’s game, talking up all the key elements we must get right, and why.
> “For our supporters, for the city, we know when the fixtures came out this was one that was in the mind of everybody.
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> “We have to play for all of our people in this game, showing the passion with control and with quality and they will be key ingredients.”
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> “You need a little bit of everything. Anger, passion, emotion, but you need to control it because too much of one can be a negative.
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> “This game is a great game off the back of what happened Wednesday as there’s no time to dwell on it too much. We can’t carry any baggage into this game.”
So Eddie Howe clearly gets it. It’s now up to him to drill that into his players, particularly those from abroad. They will obviously understand what a derby means to supporters, but do they understand what _this_ derby means? That’s an entirely different question.
They didn’t seem to know when they took to the pitch at the Stadium of Light, but this is the perfect chance to put it right.
Today is about redemption for the reverse fixture. It’s about redemption for Wednesday. It’s about continuing our assault on the Premier League and getting back into Europe.
HWTL!