Oh no, here we go. Newcastle travel to Stamford Bridge of all places, on the back of their two poor performances over the Christmas period. Sam Allardyce and his team will be looking to pick some result up on a ground where noone has won in the Premiership for a long time. Can they do it? We asked the panel…

Rich

“Oh goody… we go down 1-0 at Wigan, Joey Barton gets arrested and is in custody for the next week, can things get much worse? Well aye, probably, tomorrow we head down to Stamford Bridge to face Chelsea in a fixture that we haven’t won for over twenty-one f****** years. Apologies for the language, but it’s safe to say that I’m not entirely thrilled with all things black and white at the minute.

As if getting nowt and being ill over Christmas wasn’t bad enough, we drew 2-2 at St. James’ with the worst team in the league, got beaten 1-0 by probably one of the worst five teams in the league and we now have to go and play Roman’s Blues down in West London. Marvellous. Apologies again if this is depressing you, but when I saw that Terry and Drogba were injured for this game I got a bit of hope… then on Match of the Day I saw Lampard go off, Carvalho and Cole get red-carded while Aston Villa stuck FOUR goals past them on their own patch.

Dear me, I thought, we might do something down there for once! We might even score our first goal there for over 6 years! Then the aforementioned happened… we went to Wigan and embarrassed the shirt, Joey f****** Barton made a tit of himself yet again and things got really dark. Hope is vanquished, now all I can see is a paggering for Allardyce and his boys and a pink slip in the post the next morning.

Managerless on New Years’ Day with an unenviable game against high-flying City to follow immediately afterwards… some of us had no say in the matter, but what sort of insane masochist supports this club by choice? Despite all the doom and gloom the optimist still lives inside me, shrinking by the day, and he still nags at me that “it would be just like Newcastle to go down there and win the bloody game.”

They’ve went 70-odd games unbeaten at home, we haven’t scored there since the opening day in 2001, we haven’t won there since 1986… wouldn’t it be just typical of this real-life soap opera to write in a victory for Newcastle United?

It’s a shame it doesn’t really work like that.

Prediction: Chelsea 3-1 Newcastle United and Allardyce gone before Man City arrive.”

Tom

“Chelsea away, oh lovely! It’s not like we get much from our visits to Stamford Bridge at the best of times, so with the way that we’re playing at the moment, this is one of the last places I want us to be going.

We are in appalling form - I don’t need to tell you all that. The last two games in particular against Derby and Wigan, the two worst teams in the league were shocking performances and embarassing results, so what chance have we got away to Chelsea?

This could be humiliating, and I don’t see any way that we will get a result down there. I can only hope for damage limitation.

If Chelsea win this 4-0, I will not be at all suprised.”

Jonny

“You know when you just want to burst into tears? The feeling is gradually coming to me looking at our previous performances, and at the fixture list ahead. Not only do we have Man City and Man United coming up in the next few weeks, but we travel to Chelsea on Saturday afternoon, with only two wins in the last ten.

Chelsea are not in good form at the moment themselves, and came close to losing to Aston Villa on Boxing Day. They’ll also be missing big stars like Terry, Drogba and Lampard. Does that matter? No not really, they’ll still destroy us.

It’s about time a team highlighted our weaknesses and gave us a thrashing, and Chelsea are certainly lining up to do it. Look at our results there the past few seasons. 0-1, 0-3, 0-4, 0-5, 0-3; it doesn’t make for lovely reading. They’re a force at home, and Newcastle are a mess at the moment.

The manager is losing it, the fans have turned, the players are fed-up, the system isn’t working, the tactics are shocking, Joey Barton is in prison; sounds like we’re back to good ol’ Newcastle United. If things don’t change soon, we could be in deep trouble.

This next few weeks could mark the end of Allardyce.

Chelsea 4-0 Newcastle.”