Hello and welcome to the Newcastle United live blog for Monday, December 25.
Merry Christmas!
Newcastle United beat West Ham on Saturday ending a damaging run of eight defeats from nine as they enter the crucial Christmas period. While Rafa Benitez is battling problems on the pitch there is also a measure of uncertainty off it, with the takeover still apparently up in the air.
United have been linked with a crop of new names - Islam Slimani, Danny Ings and Charly Musonda were among the names linked on Wednesday.
We'll have the latest on the takeover and also January transfer rumours that are starting to stack up.
As ever we want to hear from you, so please send us your thoughts over Facebook at www.facebook.com/chroniclenufc/ or on Twitter at @ChronicleNUFC.
Paul Merson's Man City prediction
Merry Christmas to you too Paul...
Man City played in second gear and still beat Bournemouth 4-0 on Saturday! They won 4-0 in second gear, so I am going to go for another 4-0 win. I think City will just rip them apart and Newcastle have had their result (beating West Ham). The problem is that Newcastle will sit 10 men behind the ball, but you are going to get broken down though before the end of the game. And City are just relentless, relentless, but it is no disrespect to Newcastle, who had a massive football result at West Ham on Saturday, but City will beat better teams than Newcastle by more than 4-0.
PAUL PREDICTS: 0-4
Gibbo's corner podcat
Today we’re launching a new feature podcast too!
Every now and then we’re going to have special podcasts with legendary Chronicle scribe John Gibson as he remembers players and moments of NUFC’s past.
The first of this is all about Jackie Milburn. Listen to Gibbo’s tales here:
Welcome
Merry Christmas and welcome to today’s Newcastle United live blog.
It might be Christmas Day but we’ll have plenty of NUFC news throughout the day, including a present for you in the form of a takeover update, which we’ll have around 10am. Stay tuned for that.