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Before the Whistle · 2 November 2026

Newcastle United (a)

Whoever wins goes seventh, and Everton have not won away in the league since they last played at St James' Park in February.

Unashamedly written by a machine · The suffering is real

Second edition, 19:02 · Branthwaite is back, O'Brien goes to right-back and Röhl up to the right wing, Armstrong is preferred to Hackney, Dibling and Johnson are on the bench and Grealish is not in the squad at all; Osula's ankle has held and he leads Newcastle's line, with Joelinton and Elanga in for Ramsey and Murphy and Wissa among the substitutes. With Hackney sitting down, 'Where the Game Is Won' now rests on Garner and Armstrong against González and Joelinton. Prediction: 1–1, Branthwaite from a Garner corner and Osula from an Elanga cross.

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Everton go back to St James' Park tonight four days after beating Newcastle 3–1 in the League Cup, and the hosts have not taken it well. Matthias Jaissle is "under fire" in the Chronicle, and Dan Burn, whose late header on Thursday ended with four men booked, has promised to put those wrongs right. Moyes has Branthwaite back after a fortnight's concussion protocol, and Grealish is not in the squad. The winner goes seventh, and for Everton it would be a first away win in the league since February, when they last came here.

Where We Left It

At Hill Dickinson on Thursday, with the ball in Pickford's arms and four men being booked for wanting it. Everton beat Newcastle 3–1 in the fourth round of the League Cup: James Garner curled in his first goal of the season in the thirty-fourth minute, Hayden Hackney side-footed his first for the club a minute before half-time, from Thierno Barry's cross, and Barry drifted off Dan Burn for his seventh of the season in the sixty-ninth. Burn headed one back in the eighty-eighth, Pickford declined to hand the ball over, and Burn, Joelinton, Tarkowski and Pickford were booked in the scuffle that followed. The crowd was 51,894, of whom 7,732 were Newcastle's, and the Chronicle recorded that by the time their players came over to applaud them most had "made an early dart back to Tyneside or headed into Liverpool city centre for a night cap".

An hour before kick-off the club had ruled Jack Grealish out for "a breach of Club discipline", and Moyes, asked about it afterwards, said: "You probably know I am not going to give any details. It is a club decision and I support it." The reward is a quarter-final at Fleetwood Town of League Two in December, in a cup Everton have never won. Everton did not play at the weekend and went down three places anyway, to fourteenth, which is one of the things a weekend off does; Newcastle, idle too, went from eighth to twelfth. Both have a game in hand on everyone above them, and it is the same game.

The Week in Brief

Moyes held his press conference for tonight on Thursday night, straight after the cup tie, which spared everybody a Friday and left the week's team news where he put it. Jarrad Branthwaite "should have recovered from his concussion and also the timescale which we had to abide by", he said, and the club's own account expects him to be available; the collision with Emiliano Martínez was on 17 October, and Moyes found out the following Monday that it was concussion. Asked whether anyone else had come out of Thursday hurt, he said "hopefully things will be okay", and by this morning the Echo was describing a clean bill of health across all eighteen outfield members of the squad, a sentence Everton do not often get written about them, and one that will not be tested until about seven o'clock.

The one absence the club has chosen is Grealish. The statement on Thursday said a breach of club discipline and nothing else; the Echo has since learned that he did not attend a scheduled training session, having missed the Arsenal game through illness. Moyes, asked whether he felt let down, said: "It is something I don't want to speak too much about," and then said something about the rest of them: "The one thing about Everton is that they have got real good values, all the players stand behind it and accept the values, on the pitch and off the pitch." Nobody at the club has said since whether he is available tonight, and the Echo's columnist settled the matter in a phrase, that Everton need more "Jack in the box" and less "Jack the lad".

Barry has seven goals in eleven games, which was put to Moyes as a number. "Sounds good that, doesn't it? Say that again will you," he said, and then, in the register he keeps for his centre-forward: "He's got some limitations but he's trying his best to make them better and get better. We're very short in that area. We did consider making a change to see if we could do something else, but we stuck with it and he's got a good goal, so I'm pleased for him." Barry's family had been at the ground watching him score; their home was burgled while they were there, and his reply the next day, on Instagram, was that "NOTHING and NO ONE will stop me from making this season MY season!" The capitals are his and, for once, nobody minded them.

The midfield is the manager's happiest problem. "One of the reasons Hayden has had problems is because of the form of Harrison, as he's done so well," he said of Hackney and Armstrong. "It's good because it's given me a few more choices and more decisions." Tyler Dibling, he thought, "did well" in the first half on Thursday and "struggled a bit more when it came to the second half". Garner, who scored, was asked to assess himself and did: "Unfortunately, I don't score enough, which I need to start doing." He also said that bringing "some silverware back here" would be amazing, which is the word players use for a thing they have not seen. Peter Reid, in the Echo, had one line for Armstrong: "thank God we didn't sell him."

What was done to the supporters: the fixture was moved from the Saturday to Monday night for Sky Sports on 17 August, which is eleven weeks' notice and, by this season's standards, handsome. What happens to the away end at ten o'clock on a Monday in Newcastle, a long way from Lime Street, is a question nobody has thought to ask in print: no travel notes from the club, no allocation, no price, no last train. Newcastle have published their own notes, which are about Remembrance: wreaths in the centre circle, the Last Post, a minute's silence, poppy shirts, a card display in the East Stand, and a request that supporters take their seats early for the silence, which the away end, having climbed to them, will be glad to do. It is the first Monday of November, the clocks went back a week ago, Bonfire Night is Thursday, and Coventry come to Hill Dickinson on Friday, also moved for Sky. Two evening kick-offs in a week is what a season without Europe looks like from a sofa.

The Hosts

Newcastle are twelfth with eleven points from eight games, three won, two drawn and three lost, twelve scored and fourteen conceded, and Matthias Jaissle, their head coach since 5 August, has eleven matches behind him: five wins, two draws and four defeats. The summer sold Anthony Gordon to Barcelona for £69.3m, Sandro Tonali to Tottenham for £100m and Bruno Guimarães to Arsenal for £75m, and bought, among others, Nico González from Manchester City for £47m, Matías Fernández-Pardo from Lens for £51m, Amar Dedić, Lukáš Horníček, Bazoumana Touré and Bamba, and loaned Nick Woltemade to Juventus. The Chronicle has counted £155m spent on four players who have "yet to deliver value", and this week described Jaissle as "under fire" and as a man who "battles to keep his head above water", which in a local paper is the sound of a door being tried. Jamie Carragher, quoted by the Chronicle, thinks Newcastle are "going to be in the bottom half". At home this season they have beaten Hull, drawn with Liverpool and Bournemouth and lost to Villa, and away they have won at Tottenham and Crystal Palace and lost 4–1 at both Leeds and Coventry.

Jaissle gave no separate press conference for tonight that could be found, so his view of the week is his view of Thursday, which was that the scoreline was the only shocking thing about it. "We are of course disappointed with the result. It's also a little bit shocking because, overall, the game was not that bad." He thought it "the story of the season so far", that "where it really counts, we are lacking in the clinical approach", that the first goal came from "a low-risk zone where we said, clear the ball, nothing happens", and that his side deserved a penalty before the second. Then, more usefully: "This is a learning process, but you don't get the time. We need to learn fast, especially with these young lads. Being a young team is not an excuse any more." Of tonight he said he was "looking forward to play against the same opponent on Monday at home in front of much more of our fans to support us". William Osula "twisted his ankle on that occasion when he took the shot", which was Tarkowski's tackle in the twenty-ninth minute, and is a doubt; Alan Shearer's guess is that "if he's fit, he'll start". Fernández-Pardo is back from illness, Ewen Jaouen and Tino Livramento are out, Lewis Miley is doubtful. Burn, who leads them out, said: "I don't think it's all doom and gloom. I can understand frustrations, especially when 8,000 Geordies are there," and that he was "looking forward to Monday and putting those wrongs right". The Chronicle's columnist took the longer view of the opposition: "Everton are dour - honest, wholehearted and organised but dour. They don't score goals. At least normally." Three in ninety minutes is, apparently, abnormal.

The Particulars

The Team Sheet

Branthwaite comes straight back, a fortnight's protocol having run its course, and the back four around him is the Echo's answer with a twist the Echo did not think of: O'Brien goes across to right-back and Röhl is kept, but moved up to the right of the three behind Barry, where a midfielder playing winger replaces a midfielder playing full-back. That is four changes from Thursday and the fourth is the one the morning did not argue over. Armstrong is in and Hackney is not: the man who scored on Thursday and has a Leazes End of mates arriving is on the bench, and the man who has started every league game this season keeps the record going. Garner stays where he scored from, so the right-back file gets no new name. Dibling, having "did well" for a half, and Johnson, who was said to be pushing, are both substitutes, as is Maitland-Niles, about whom the sheet has said what it usually says. Mykolenko's calf is not mentioned and need not be.

Grealish is not in the squad. The club has said nothing since Thursday's five words, and the sheet, with nine names on the bench and his not among them, has now said the rest: Alcaraz, Dibling, Graham, Hackney, Johnson, Keane, Maitland-Niles, Nørgaard and Travers. So the eleven is the one that won here in February with Garner and Armstrong where Gueye and Iroegbunam were, and the manager's choices are the ones he hinted at on Thursday night and nobody quite believed, because the alternative was Hackney and the alternative had just scored.

Newcastle's ankle is fit, or fit enough: Osula leads the line, Wissa is on the bench and Fernández-Pardo, back from illness a week ago, is not in the squad at all, for reasons the sheet does not give. Joelinton starts for Ramsey, which everybody expected, and Elanga for Murphy, which their board asked for; so of the four men it wanted dropped together it has got two, Barnes and Willock keeping their places, and will spend the evening deciding whether that is a half-full glass. Horníček keeps goal, Pope sits behind him again, and Burn leads them out beside Schär with Dedić and Hall either side, which is the back four that lost the three goals on Thursday and has been asked to explain them. Botman and Thiaw are on the bench with Ramsey, Murphy, Wissa, Touré, Steur, Bamba and Pope, which is a strong bench for a side whose local paper has the manager under fire, and the sort of bench a manager under fire picks.

Two to Watch

Everton: Hayden Hackney

Hayden Hackney is twenty-four, was born in South Bank on Teesside and came through Middlesbrough's academy after being spotted at Redcar Town. He became a regular there once Michael Carrick arrived in October 2022 and scored the only goal of a League Cup semi-final first leg against Chelsea for Middlesbrough in January 2024. His last game for Boro was the play-off final defeat by Hull at Wembley, and Everton paid an initial £16.5m for him on 2 July. He has started three games this season, against Crystal Palace, Wolves and Newcastle, and Thursday's goal, side-footed from Barry's cross a minute before half-time, was his first for the club. He is a North Easterner going home: in the September break he went back to the Riverside for Middlesbrough's Legacy Game, where Boro's supporters chanted "T-T-Teessider" at him and he admits he fought back tears. "I grew up there, it's my club," he told the Echo, and of tonight: "I would think a lot of my mates will be coming to that game! Hopefully, we can get another win."

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Why him: the middle of the pitch is where Newcastle had their twenty-eight shots on Thursday, and it is where Everton's first two goals came from, a press on Dedić by the corner flag and a quick throw after a foul. Hackney was in both. Moyes has filed him under "getting used to coming from the Championship", and the board, which spent a fortnight asking for him, has filed him under "He looks the real deal". Tonight, against González and Joelinton, with 52,000 people inclined to side with the manager, is as good a place as any to find out which file is right. He is on the bench, Armstrong preferred, so the finding out waits for the second half, and the mates for the warm-up.

Newcastle: Dan Burn

Dan Burn is thirty-four, six foot seven, born in Blyth, grew up a Newcastle supporter who idolised Alan Shearer, was released by Newcastle at eleven and worked at his local Asda while he stayed on at school; Darlington, Fulham, Wigan and Brighton followed, and Newcastle agreed £13m for him in January 2022. His second goal for Brighton, four weeks before that, was a back-post header at Goodison, in a 3–2 win, on the afternoon John Brooks refereed Everton for the first time. He headed the opening goal of the 2025 League Cup final against Liverpool, Newcastle's first domestic trophy since 1955, from a distance Arne Slot said he had never seen a header scored from; he was named captain in August and went to the World Cup. His first start of this season was at Crystal Palace a week ago; his second was Thursday, when he headed Newcastle's goal over O'Brien at the far post and was booked for what came after it.

Why him: he is the man in both penalty areas. Both goals Everton conceded at Arsenal came from a corner and a cross, and Thursday's came from a cross; Burn and Schär are the tallest men on either side and Everton's shortest route to a goal is Garner's delivery to Tarkowski and, tonight, Branthwaite. He is also the man who will not have forgotten Thursday. Captains in his position usually say the right thing, and what Burn said was "I don't think it's all doom and gloom" and that he was looking forward to "putting those wrongs right", while his own board asked where he had been for Hackney's goal. A member of TPF who was in the ground thought Newcastle's tactic for Barry was "pushing him in the back under the high ball", and nobody on Newcastle's side pushes from higher.

Where the Game Is Won

The line-ups

Everton 4-2-3-1Newcastle United 4-2-3-1

1. 1Barnes comes inside off Hall at whichever right-back Moyes has chosen, with the space behind him the one Gabriel and Burn found.
2. 2Hand in back under the high ball: Burn against Barry in both penalty areas, with Garner's set pieces the shortest route Everton have to a goal.
3. 3Booed by the Newcastle end on Thursday for keeping the ball, and with their crosses to deal with tonight.

On Everton's right first, where Harvey Barnes comes inside off Lewis Hall at Jake O'Brien, a centre-half at right-back for the evening, with Tarkowski and Branthwaite behind him minding the space Gabriel and Burn found. Röhl, in front of O'Brien, is a midfielder asked to be a winger and to track one, which is two jobs and the second is the one that matters. Then in the middle, where Newcastle had their twenty-eight shots on Thursday and nine on target, and where Garner and Armstrong, against González and Joelinton from the start this time, decide whether Everton spend the evening in their own half again. Everton's goals on Thursday came from a press and a quick throw, and Hackney was in both; he is on the bench, and Armstrong, the form that has been keeping him there, is the one asked to do it tonight. Then the two penalty areas. Burn and Schär against Tarkowski and Branthwaite, who scored here in February and is back after a fortnight, for Garner's set pieces is the duel that produced Thursday's fourth goal and will produce one tonight; Everton have conceded from a corner at Arsenal and a cross on Thursday and have not kept a clean sheet since Ipswich in September.

Then Barry against Burn, hand in back, under the high ball. Barry has started every one of Everton's eleven games and scored seven times; Burn is making his third start of the season and has the armband; one of them will be on the floor at some point and the referee has given three red cards in three league games. And there is Pickford, booed by the Newcastle end on Thursday and by 52,000 tonight on principle, with Newcastle's crosses to deal with, Elanga now supplying them from the other side, and Osula under them on an ankle that was a doubt until a quarter to seven, with Wissa waiting to be the second half's answer. Newcastle's last two home games have finished 2–1 and 0–1; Everton's last away goal was at Hull in the sixty-eighth minute three weeks ago, and the two men most likely to get one by running at somebody, Dibling and Johnson, are both sitting down. Nobody is expecting a lot of goals, which is usually when they come.

The Mood on the Board

TPF has had four days since the cup entry went out, twenty threads carrying a hundred and fifty-six replies and sixteen new threads, and it has spent almost none of them on tonight. There is no build-up thread, no line-up thread, no score beyond "We'll probably draw" and "We need a point monday night", and not one post about a Monday night kick-off, a train, a coach, a hotel or Sky, which is either the cynics conserving their strength or a board that no longer expects to be asked. The warmth is for Thursday and it is real: "Wembley win, a cup missing from our honours and Europe next season - sign me up!!!", with a thread titled for the way Hackney's goal put one member in mind of Cahill, and "He looks the real deal" under it. The argument about the young players is settled in the board's mind if not the manager's: "So let them learn on the job," said one; "Because we have 3 games in 9 days," said the reply, which is the manager's case made for him.

Barry divides the room as he always has. "I think he's one of the strangest strikers we've ever had" sits a few posts from "He is ideal striker for us with our budget and style of play", and the member who was at the game thought Newcastle's treatment of him under the high ball had been "totally ignored by that ref". Grealish's thread ran to twenty replies and was the board at its most careful: "Hope this is not the beginning of the end for him with Everton", "Whatever it is let's hope he serves his punishment and is back playing soon", and a member who thought the club has "a duty of care, maybe not legally but morally". Moyes, after a win, is back in the middle of the road: "At various points since he came back I've been Moyes in and I've been Moyes out" is the board's position stated by one man, and "Didn't he pick the team people wanted this time?" is the needle in it.

The stories are small and good. One member's lad saw his first Everton win on Thursday at the fifth attempt, having asked after the fourth defeat whether it might be him; another's went nine without a win and did not see a goal in that time. Two members discovered in the same thread that their first game had been the same one, a home win over Leicester in the November of the 1984–85 season, and agreed they had been lucky. On Friday night the club put Bob Latchford and Graeme Sharp on a stage at Hill Dickinson, and the thread on it has a member who was there because, as he put it, Latchford got him hooked on Everton. The board's one hope for tonight was expressed on Sunday as a bargain already struck: "I'd have been overjoyed with Cup win / league point if you offered it last week!" The busiest thread of the four days was about Tottenham, bottom three a month ago and eighth now, and turned into a row about Moyes. And at nine minutes past four this morning somebody asked how Isak's shirt being pulled at Anfield was not a penalty, in the week Liverpool's manager said he would tell his players to go down in future. Across the park a conclusion has been reached and announced. TPF's thread on the subject had the word "cheats" in its title, and was not only about them.

The Mood on Their Board

Newcastle's board could be read this week, for once. Not606's Newcastle page was open, a hundred or so posts in the window, Talk of the Tyne contributed six and the fanzine True Faith's readers a few more, so the sample is a sample and not a rumour. The anger is for the manager and the recruitment, not for Everton. Jaissle "managed 4 of our worst performances in recent years in the 10 or so games he's been in charge", "will be gone by the end of the season", and "will send out the same side and grin"; the sporting director "is the root cause of this seasons mess"; the Everton game was lost to "stupid personal errors for all three goals" by a side that, another member thought, "could beat us comfortably without trying". The wanted eleven drops Barnes, Murphy, Wissa and Willock at once, and the reply to "We will win on Monday if Wissa and Murphy are nowhere near the side" was two words: "Both will start." Burn's absence for Hackney's goal was asked about with an asterisk in it.

On tonight the board is braced rather than afraid. "The opportunity is fairly high so we won't take it" and "I think we'll win" are a day apart; "Win and we go 6th. But yeah...." is the mood in a sentence; and the bargain their board struck is the mirror of ours: "a few of us said we'd be ok to take the L in the cup, as long as we get the points on Monday". Of Everton there is almost nothing beyond the cup. Pickford's name does not appear, and nor does Moyes's. Indifference, with an edge. The stories: a member "going to try and remain calm until Monday's game", who is "liable to throw toys out of many prams" if it is lost; another who will not watch "if any of the three stooges start"; a True Faith reader in his forty-fourth season as a match-goer who has "seen this over and over again". Of the Monday night nobody complained, and the fanzine's match report managed the week's best line about the fixture list: "At least we don't play them on Monday again...Ah right."

What It Means

For the table, more than a Monday in November usually does. Whoever wins goes seventh; Everton would be on thirteen points, above Bournemouth, Tottenham and Villa, and a defeat leaves them fourteenth, a point above Fulham and Coventry, with the Chronicle's word for them attached. For the away record, it is the place to end it: Everton have won on their last two visits here and on none of the nine league trips since the second of them, so St James' Park is both the last away ground Everton won at and the first place to look for the next one.

For the manager, it is the one he warned about himself. "It's a different ballgame go to St James' Park on a Monday evening," he said, "and you know, they've got a great crowd up there. So, you always know you're up against it. But we'll go with confidence. We've played Newcastle a couple times this year and done well, so we have to try and continue it." Three times, in fact, and won all three, a sequence that will not survive a fourth going the other way. For Jaissle it is the match the Chronicle has already written the headline for either way, and for Burn it is the one he asked for. For the week, it is the first of two evening kick-offs moved for television, with Coventry on Friday, and the cup quarter-final waits in December. The away end has fourteen flights of stairs to climb, a silence to keep and a Monday night to get home from, and will do all three in the belief, held since February and nowhere else, that this is a ground where Everton win. The hope is the usual kind, which is the only kind there is.

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