With Darren Moore grabbing five points from his first three matches in charge of the Baggies, he has managed to keep West Brom from being mathematically relegated very early on. However, this fight of his could come to an end this weekend as West Brom have to win all of their remaining three matches and hope that Swansea, Southampton and Stoke fail to exceed the 34-point mark. Anything less than a win for West Brom will send them down regardless of other results.

Given the circumstances, this is probably not a good time for West Brom to travel to St. James’ Park where they have only won once out of the last 15 league visits. A win for us on Saturday will narrow the gap between ourselves and Leicester who travel to Selhurst Park on Saturday. A win for us and defeat for Leicester will bring us level on points with the Foxes but it is the midlands club who holds the superior goal difference.

As far as recent history with this fixture is concerned, we appear to hold the higher ground having gained ten points from a possible twelve from the past four meetings at St. James’ Park. With one final home match in the season still to come after Saturday’s fixture, being Chelsea on the final day, this match against West Brom is a good chance for the team to end the season strongly and it would be great if we can extend the unbeaten run at home which currently stands at eight matches – the first of which coming against Brighton at the end of 2017.

Facts and Figures

All Competitions

Newcastle wins: 45

West Brom wins: 42

Draws: 34

Premier League

Newcastle wins: 11

Draws: 6

West Brom wins: 4

Premier League at St. James’ Park

Newcastle wins: 7

Draws: 2

West Brom wins: 1

Previous ten (all competitions)

Newcastle wins: 5 (14 goals)

Draws: 3

West Brom wins: 2 (9 goals)

Biggest win (in this fixture)

Newcastle United 5 - 1 West Brom (21/11/1931)

Newcastle United 5 – 1 West Brom (14/09/1938)

Newcastle United 5 – 1 West Brom (26/11/1949)

Whilst in the midst of an excellent run in this fixture, we experienced three 5-1 victories over the Baggies out of seven visits from them spanning over the top two divisions and 18 years.

Biggest defeat (in this fixture)

Newcastle United 3 – 7 West Brom (16/09/1953)

This week I have been feeling nostalgic and yet full of hilarity. Writing this on the Wednesday, just wanted to mention that yesterday (Tuesday) it was this time last year that we confirmed our promotion following an excellent performance over Preston. Exactly a year later, we currently find ourselves in the top half of the Premier League. The last team to come up from the Championship and then finish in the top half was a Kevin Nolan inspired West Ham team in the 2012/13 season as the Hammers finished in tenth place with 46 points.

Following our promotion last year, I loved the chant “Going up, going down” that went around! I genuinely was not expecting to be singing that again this season (with the obvious alteration to make it, ‘Staying up, going down’)! It’s been a fab week for me where the mackems are crawling back into their shell and not responding to any of my messages as they will be experiencing third tier football next season – something we have never experienced! I will miss the derbies but this additional relegation is what they deserve especially with Burton Albion sending them down, I do not need to go into further detail than that. It may be a long shot but we can always hope to come up against the mackems in the Carabao Cup where the first two rounds (in our case, the second round) are both seeded and regionalized.