Welcome to St James' Park

We welcome the first ever meeting between the two sides tonight at the rightly renamed St James' Park.

They are a side doing well in the Belgian top league with only one defeat out of eleven played so far.

That solitary defeat happening as recently as last Saturday to Leuven, who taught them a bit of a lesson in a 4-1 win.

Also known as FC Bruges, they are a European giant from yesteryear with a couple of finals appearances in European competition. Once in the UEFA Cup and the other in the European Cup.
Both competitions, now resemble a mini Euro league but back then they were highly competitive tournaments full of strong sides, so we're in good company tonight.

Kick off is at 8.05pm tonight and my predicted line up is: Harper, Tavernier, S.Taylor, Williamson, Ferguson, Obertan, Tiote, Bigiramana,Sammy Ameobi, Shola Ameobi, Cisse.

Bart Buysee referred to Tiote as a 'Human Wall'.

Alan Pardew has said that we play too many games and this has an effect on whether we can compete properly in this tournament.

For the black and whites (or luminous dodgy green maybe), we will be playing a mixture of youth and first team squad members.

The likes of Cheik Tiote are playing due to impending suspensions in the league but Alan Pardew has hinted strongly that the Ameobi brothers will be making history by being the first brotherhood to start in many years.

Id also expect the likes of Steve Harper, Obertan, Marveux, James Tavernier, Shane Ferguson and Gael Bigiramana to get a game with Papiss Cisse probably being another let off the leash with his recent 'rest' behind him.

Not knowing how they'll line up, im guessing they'll not go with the usual 4-3-3 formation, you would think they'd still play a strong side considering it's taken more serious earlier by the smaller nations. Maybe they'll stick one up front and pack the midfield.

Their main man at the present is Carlos Bacca, who not only scored the single goal in their recent defeat but has found the net on 13 occassions in 19 games for them this season, so he'll be one to watch.

First ever meeting.

2-0 to NUFC

Home to WBA on Sunday

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