Brentford face Newcastle United at Gtech Community Stadium in the Premier League on Sunday afternoon (2pm kick-off GMT).

Keith Andrews' side have lost just one home game this season, while the Magpies head into this clash having won none of their Premier League away matches this term.

Analysis, team news, match officials and more. Here's everything you need to know ahead of the fixture.

Pre-match Analysis

Stephen Gillett, Playmaker Stats: Woltemade the man to watch on Sunday

There has been plenty of talk about Alexander Isak’s protracted transfer to Liverpool, and its butterfly effect on the Premier League champions, but far less about its impact on Newcastle.

If you were to pop-quiz every Premier League manager on which challenge they’d prefer - a) integrating Isak into their starting XI or b) replacing him - you’d hear a chorus of “no brainer.” Yet the scale of the task facing Eddie Howe and Newcastle this season has been largely underplayed.

Brentford head coach Keith Andrews will sympathise, but only to an extent, given that Yoane Wissa’s summer move to the Magpies was part of the transfer chain set in motion by Isak’s record-breaking £125 million switch.

Despite losing the DR Congo international as well as Bryan Mbeumo, the Bees’ new-look front three of Igor Thiago, Dango Ouattara and Kevin Schade has started the 2025/26 campaign in promising fashion, scoring 10 goals between them.

The trio have shown a blend of pace, power and unpredictability, and the early evidence suggests Brentford still possess a cutting edge after last season’s record Premier League goal haul.

With Wissa out injured, young German striker Nick Woltemade has carried the goalscoring burden for a Newcastle attack seeking to fill an Isak-shaped void and forge a fresh identity.

The former Stuttgart striker’s adaptation to the Premier League has been swift, a light touch and steady temperament already evident. Woltemade has hit five goals across all competitions for the Magpies - and his shot conversion rate of 30.77 per cent is second only to Brighton’s Danny Welbeck (42.86 per cent) among top-flight forwards.

Toon winger Jacob Murphy and talisman Bruno Guimarães have also chipped in with goals, but Howe is still waiting for his attack to click - Newcastle’s shot conversion rate of 7.2 per cent highlights a collective room for improvement.

They may be in transition at the top end of the pitch, but Howe’s men remain characteristically resilient without the ball. Newcastle are the only side yet to concede a Premier League goal in the opening 30 minutes this season, and have kept five clean sheets in their first 10 league games. Only Arsenal (7.5), Manchester City (9.4) and Chelsea (10.1) have faced fewer shots per game than the Magpies (10.2).

From a Brentford perspective, perhaps the most disappointing aspect of their 2-0 defeat to Crystal Palace last weekend was the manner of the two goals they conceded. Jean-Philippe Mateta’s header stemmed from an indirect free-kick, while Nathan Collins’ own goal gave the Bees a taste of their own medicine from throw-ins.

Statistically, Brentford remain the Premier League’s best side at defending set-pieces over the past two seasons, but Andrews and his players will want to move on from a performance which, as the Irishman admitted afterwards, “didn’t hit the heights.”

With Newcastle still smarting from a 3-1 defeat at West Ham in their last Premier League outing, both managers will urge their sides to switch on, at both ends of the pitch, to avoid another off day.

Scout Report

Dan Long, Sky Sports: Stark contrast between Newcastle's league and cup form

While missing out on a second-successive Champions League campaign will have been disappointing for Newcastle, they absolutely made the most of the less congested fixture schedule last season.

For starters, there was a six-game winning streak in the Premier League between December 2024 and January 2025, and another five-game run between March and April. Those two spells alone contributed hugely to the club winning 20 Premier League matches in a single campaign for the first time since 2002/03 and for only the sixth time overall.

Despite losing their final two games, Eddie Howe’s side finished fifth, which secured a third-straight top-seven finish for the first time since 2001/02 to 2003/04 - but, more importantly, a return to the Champions League, owing to a far superior goal difference to Aston Villa, who finished level on points in sixth. “The achievement is huge,” said Howe on the final day of the season.

That was on top of winning the Carabao Cup by way of a 2-1 victory against Liverpool at Wembley earlier in March, with that triumph ending Newcastle’s 70-year wait for a major domestic trophy.

On the pitch this season, in cup competitions, Newcastle have thrived so far this season. They are through to a fifth Carabao Cup quarter-final in six seasons - with Fulham standing between them and a third semi-final in four - and they beat both Union SG and Benfica in the Champions League without conceding a goal.

But there is a stark contrast between their form in tournament football and their form in the Premier League. The Magpies are 13th going into this weekend’s trip to west London and they have scored just 10 goals, with only Aston Villa and Leeds (both nine), and Nottingham Forest and Wolves (both seven) having hit fewer.

Meanwhile, their last away win came on 7 April at Leicester. They have played eight times on the road since then and picked up only four points. Last Sunday, they were beaten 3-1 by struggling West Ham, with Howe commenting his side were “unrecognisable in some aspects of our game.”

As Chris Waugh touched on in Hot off the Press, Newcastle want to become serial winners - but to achieve the long-term goal, they must be able to successfully balance competing on multiple fronts, and that means striving for an uptick in their Premier League form, starting immediately.

In the Dugout

Eddie Howe

Before turning his hand to management for the first time, Eddie Howe had a 13-year playing career as a defender, with all but two of his 312 senior appearances having been made in a Bournemouth shirt. He was, however, forced to retire prematurely at the age of just 29 at the end of the 2006/07 season.

By this time, he was already managing the Cherries’ reserve team, which he continued to do until September 2008, when manager Kevin Bond was sacked, concluding his time at the club, too.

Before long, he had been re-hired as a youth coach and, in January 2009, was appointed first-team manager after a short spell as caretaker, following Jimmy Quinn’s sacking.

The odds were stacked against Howe; Bournemouth were second bottom of League Two on New Year’s Day - having been handed a 17-point deduction at the start of the year. Yet, he managed to guide his team to 12 wins from the final 21 games, which saw them miraculously survive by nine points.

Howe’s side were promoted to League One the following year but, in January 2011, he left the south coast for Burnley, where he stayed until October 2012, before returning to Bournemouth to take over from Paul Groves. He, essentially, picked up where he left off, securing promotion to the Championship in April 2013 and to the Premier League for the first time two years later.

Bournemouth were relegated from the Premier League, after five consecutive seasons, in 2020, leading to Howe’s departure from Vitality Stadium by mutual consent.

After a 15-month break, he took over from Steve Bruce at Newcastle in November 2021, with the 3-3 draw against Brentford his first official game in charge, though he had to watch the game from a hotel room after contracting Covid-19.

Howe is currently the fourth-longest serving manager in the Premier League, after Pep Guardiola, Mikel Arteta and Marco Silva, and one of only 15 in the top four divisions to have held his post for three years or more.

He is also the seventh-longest serving Newcastle manager in history and less than 70 games away from overtaking both Sir Bobby Robson and Kevin Keegan.

The Gameplan

With Chris Waugh, The Athletic

Chris Waugh, Newcastle correspondent for The Athletic, discusses how the Magpies are likely to be set up this weekend.

"Generally, Newcastle play with a 4-3-3 formation," he said.

The starting midfield in the last two Premier League games away from home has been what has long been seen as their “strongest” midfield, with Joelinton, Sandro Tonali and Bruno Guimarães, who are sometimes considered as one of the best trios in the Premier League.

But, as I said, away from home, they have struggled. Joelinton was hooked at Brighton and struggled again at West Ham, so I struggle to see those three starting together.

Woltemade will be through the middle, with Anthony Gordon, theoretically, down the left, though he has not scored or assisted a league goal in 19 games. Jacob Murphy will probably start on the right; Anthony Elanga came in in the summer, but has not really hit the heights yet.

Lewis Hall could come back in at left-back, where Dan Burn has been playing in his absence, Kieran Trippier will be at right-back after he was ill for the West Ham game, while Sven Botman and Malick Thiaw have largely been playing at centre-back, with Nick Pope in goal.

But it would not surprise me if there was a little bit of a rip up and start again come the Brentford game because the formula is not working away from home at the minute, and it feels like it needs a bit of a rethink.

Last Premier League starting XI v West Ham United (4-3-3): Pope; Krafth, Thiaw, Botman, Burn; Guimarães, Tonali, Joelinton; Murphy, Woltemade, Gordon

Read our full interview with Chris Waugh here

Match Officials

Attwell's second Brentford game of the season

Referee: Stuart Attwell

Assistants: Constantine Hatzidakis and Ian Hussin

Fourth official: Thomas Bramall

VAR: Paul Tierney

Stuart Attwell made history on 23 August 2008 when he became the youngest referee of a Premier League game, taking charge of Blackburn Rovers v Hull City aged just 25. That completed a remarkable rise for the Nuneaton-born official who had only taken charge of his first EFL game 12 months previously.

This season, he has refereed seven games in the top flight, showing 36 yellow cards and zero red cards.

His last Brentford game was earlier this term at Gtech Community Stadium, when he was the man in the middle for the Bees' 2-2 draw with Chelsea.

Memorable Meeting

Brentford 4 Newcastle 2, (Premier League, 7 December 2024)

Brentford maintained the best home record in the Premier League with a 4-2 victory over Newcastle United last season.

Bryan Mbeumo, Yoane Wissa, Nathan Collins and Kevin Schade were all on target as the Bees battled to a first league win over the Magpies since 1948.

Saturday’s win meant that Thomas Frank’s side had dropped just two points from a possible 24 at Gtech Community Stadium last term.