Sam Allardyce’s unchanged Newcastle XI seeking for a revenge against Birmingham City team for last season’s FA Cup demolition. Now they have Alex McLeish as the new manager and with last Sunday 3-2 win over Spurs, they expectation is high.

That wouldn’t be easy for them as the United lads who are almost inflicting Arsenal’s first defeat of the season on Wednesday night, will look to get back to winning ways on home soil to payback the Geordies never-ending support.

Birmingham are without club captain Damien Johnson, but welcoming back their midfielder Gary McSheffrey who has a minor hip injury but recovered in time, while forward Garry O’Connor (groin) returns to the bench.

TEAMS

Newcastle United:
Shay Given, Habib Beye, Charles N’Zogbia, Steven Taylor, David Rozehnal, Nicky Butt, Joey Barton, Geremi (c), James Milner, Alan Smith, Oba Martins
Subs: Steve Harper, Jose Enrique, David Edgar, Emre, Mark Viduka

Birmingham City:
Maik Taylor, Stephen Kelly, Mathew Sadler, Rafael Schmitz, Liam Ridgwell (c), Sebastian Larsson, Cameron Jerome, Gary McSheffrey, Mehdi Nafti, Daniel De Ridder, Fabrice Muamba
Subs: Colin Doyle, Garry O’Connor, Mikael Forssell, Stuart Parnaby, Olivier Kapo

Referee: Rob Styles
Attendance: tbc

James Milner says he and his team-mates can not see the pressure of playing for Newcastle United. If it’s much made of what Joey Barton’s said last weekend about the expectant and demanding St. James’s Park crowd.

“We haven’t performed as well as we should have in a few games, but we want to change that against Birmingham.” Milner said, “Not performing will always create pressure, but there’s pressure every time you walk out on the field.”

Milner said that playing for a massive club like Newcastle doesn’t means you’re under pressure, but it is more to a thing you should deal with. There’s always “pressure” in every aspect of your life, not just for a footballer.

Newcastle United and any other football team don’t need a player who can’t handle the pressure. Everyone has it but you will take time to deal with it and hopefully if the lads putting in performances like they did against Arsenal, it’ll be no pressure anymore.

Meanwhile, Sam Allardyce have watch the Blues match against Spurs, and expecting a different sort of game than we have last Wednesday.

“What we’ve got to do is keep our feet on the ground and make sure when we come across Birmingham City, we understand that it’s a completely different football match.” Allardyce told the Chronicle, “We want the fans to be as loud as they were, and for them to do that, we’ve got to give the performance we did against Arsenal.”

Big Sam predicted a more defending Birmingham team which will need more awareness not being caught by their counter-attacking tactic. Allardyce want the same commitment and level of performance to get from a draw to a win at home.

After playing on Wednesday night, Sam Allardyce has rested all Newcastle players to get them fully recovered before calling them back to training for the big one on Saturday.

Newcastle and Birmingham both have four defeats from their last six Premier League fixtures. The latest game between the two side was back in January 17 when they thrashed the Magpies 5-1 in an FA Cup third round replay.

In Premier League, Birmingham only won one of their four Premier League encounter at St James’ Park and have three defeats. The Blues win is in August 30, 2003. Newcastle will still without our injury victims, Abdoulaye Faye still our with Calf injury, Stephen ‘Nevermind About Him’ Carr got hamstring and Claudio Cacapa still covering from knee injury.

Michael ‘Will Go To Manchester City’ Owen also continues his thigh rehabilitation while Damien Duff have to go through the reserves team before making any comeback to first team squad.

With only one place below Newcastle position in Premierships table, Birmingham new boss Alex McLeish is keen to bring Big Sam back on his knee and set us back into our miserable situation again.

He will have most of his first team squad for tomorrow clash with us. Gary McSheffrey suffered a minor hip injury against Portsmouth a fortnight ago but he should be ok to partner Cameron Jerome up front.

Meanwhile, Garry O’Connor confirmed his fitness after a recent groin problem and have 90 minutes of play for the Blues reserves. But their skipper Damien Johnson is unlikely to be involved.

Newcastle and Birmingham past matches: