Newcastle vs Liverpool Prediction: Premier League Preview
_Two teams under new management clash at St. James’ Park on Sunday. Look ahead to this showdown with ourNewcastle vs Liverpool prediction and preview._
Newcastle vs Liverpool: The Key Insights
- The Opta supercomputer makes Liverpool clear favourites, giving them a 50.2% win probability.
- This will be Andoni Iraola’s first competitive game in charge of Liverpool. The Spaniard is on the longest active unbeaten run of any Premier League manager (18 matches).
- Newcastle manager Matthias Jaissle has won his first game in charge at each of his three previous clubs.
It has been a summer of change for both Newcastle United and Liverpool, and fittingly, these two Premier League giants go head-to-head to kickstart their 2026-27 campaigns.
Liverpool made the call quickly on sacking Arne Slot at the end of last season, and they swiftly made a move to replace him with Andoni Iraola, one of the Premier League’s most impressive managers of recent seasons.
Eddie Howe looked set to take Newcastle into another season, but at the end of July, he decided he’d had enough. Matthias Jaissle is the man tasked with replacing Howe.
Newcastle fans have endured a difficult summer. Anthony Gordon left for Barcelona, Sandro Tonali was then sold to Tottenham Hotspur and then, captain fantastic Bruno Guimarães departed for Arsenal.
Those three sales brought in over £200 million in transfer fees, but with stalwart Kieran Trippier also gone, this is a squad that is rebuilding under Jaissle.
This week, Newcastle brought in right-back Amar Dedić from Benfica, but it still feels like they are going into the season short, especially having lost so much top-level experience.
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Liverpool are also going through something of a rebuild. Mohamed Salah, Andy Robertson and Ibrahima Konate have departed, while Curtis Jones appears on his way to Internazionale.
Ronald Araújo has come in from Barcelona on loan, Jérémy Jacquet is available, while the Reds beat Newcastle to the signing of winger Víctor Muñoz. That said, Iraola still wants more.
Liverpool pipping Newcastle to signings has been a theme of recent transfer windows, and that had direct consequences in the corresponding fixture at St. James’ Park last season.
Long-standing Newcastle target Hugo Ekitiké scored twice in a dramatic 3-2 win for Liverpool, who then went on to spend a British transfer record fee on Alexander Isak.
Ekitiké won’t be fit to feature on Sunday, while Isak endured an injury-hit season last term and scored only three Premier League goals.
In fact, this could be Isak’s first Premier League appearance against Newcastle since leaving for Liverpool.
Only 10 players (and none for Liverpool) have ever scored on MD1 of a Premier League season against a side they previously played for in the competition, including Andy Cole against the Magpies for Manchester United in 2000-01.
And while Liverpool will be keen to bolster Iraola’s squad, there will be an onus on the Spaniard to get the best out of what he has got.
Iraola is, after all, on the longest current unbeaten run of any manager in the Premier League (last 18 games of 2025-26 with Bournemouth), while he has also never lost any of his six meetings with Newcastle in the competition (W3 D3).
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Jaissle, meanwhile, has won his first game in charge at each of his three previous clubs (Liefering, Salzburg and Al-Ahli).
His Al-Ahli side were also unbeaten at home in the Saudi Pro League last season (W14 D3), winning the last 13 in a row.
Newcastle have both scored (14 goals) and conceded (13) in each of their last seven Premier League games at St James’ Park. Their record home run of both scoring and conceding in the competition is eight games, set three times previously, most recently in April 2021.
Liverpool, meanwhile, lost nine Premier League away games last season – including four of their last five. It was their most away defeats in a league campaign since 2011-12 (10).
However, Liverpool are unbeaten in their first Premier League match in the last 13 seasons (W10 D3) since losing 3-0 to West Brom in 2012-13. It is the longest current ongoing run and longest since Chelsea went 18 seasons without losing the opener between 1999-00 and 2016-17.
Newcastle, though, have not lost their opening league game in any of the last four seasons (W3 D1) since losing 4-2 to West Ham in 2021-22. They last had a longer unbeaten run in their opening game between 1972-73 and 1977-78.
Newcastle vs Liverpool Head-to-Head
One thing you can usually guarantee when Newcastle face Liverpool is goals.
There have been 198 goals scored in Premier League meetings between Newcastle and Liverpool, and with two goals in this game it would be the third fixture to reach 200 in the competition, after Liverpool vs Spurs (211) and Arsenal vs Spurs (200).
Liverpool definitely have the edge in this fixture, though.
Newcastle are winless in their last 19 Premier League games against the Reds (D5 L14). Only against Manchester City have they ever gone 20+ consecutive meetings without a victory against an opponent in the competition (22 between February 2006 and September 2018).
And Liverpool have not lost any of their last nine Premier League games against Newcastle at St James’ Park (W6 D3) and could equal the longest unbeaten run by a team away to the Magpies in the competition here: 10 games by Man City (March 2007 – December 2017).
Newcastle vs Liverpool Prediction
Newcastle have a dismal record against Liverpool, and the supercomputer is not expecting that to change this time around.
The Reds came out on top in 50.2% of the model’s pre-match data-led simulations.
Newcastle have a 25.4% win probability, with the draw coming in at 24.4%.
Newcastle vs Liverpool Predicted Lineups
Newcastle : Lukáš Horníček, Lewis Hall, Sven Botman, Malick Thiaw, Amar Dedić, Jacob Ramsey, Aladji Bamba, Harvey Barnes, Yoane Wissa, Anthony Elanga, William Osula
Head coach: Matthias Jaissle
Liverpool: Alisson Becker, Milos Kerkez, Virgil van Dijk, Jérémy Jacquet, Jeremie Frimpong, Ryan Gravenberch, Dominik Szoboszlai, Cody Gakpo, Florian Wirtz, Rio Ngumoha, Alexander Isak
Head coach: Andoni Iraola
Opta Power Rankings
The Opta Power Rankings are a global team ranking system that assigns an ability score to over 15,000 domestic football teams on a scale between zero and 100, where zero is the worst-ranked team in the world, and 100 is the best team in the world.
Ahead of kick-off this weekend, here is the Opta Power Ranking for both sides.
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