Newcastle v Bruges: Toon to sweep Belgians aside on Tyneside

Newcastle will be on the verge of Group D qualification with a win at home to Club Brugge which, history suggests, seems highly likely.

Alan Pardew’s side are 8/13 favourites to get the win that will take their points total to seven from three games and, after comfortably beating group-winner rivals Bordeaux 3-0 last time out, they’d realistically only need one more to see them through to the competition’s knock-out stage.

The French side thumped Brugge 4-0 when they visited the Stade Chaban Delmas in the opening round of group-stage games; this was one in a sequence of four away days in which they’ve failed to win.

This isn’t a great time for them to have to visit the Sports Direct Arena, where the Magpies have picked up four wins from six games in all competitions, and have five wins from as many games against Belgian opposition.

Papiss Cisse is in line for a start here after sitting out the north east derby. He is a striker who is thriving in games that are taking place outside of the Premier League realm.

He’s notched goals in the last two cup games he’s featured in and is joint-favourite to break the deadlock here at 4/1, while he can be backed at 25/1 to score a hat-trick.

With Newcastle on form, the Belgians ill travellers and Cisse expected to fill his boots, the outcome of this game should be more a question of how many can the hosts win by, as opposed to who is going to win the game.

Bearing this in mind, the handicap markets represent good value for punters. The Newcastle victory with a two-goal handicap is priced up very reasonably at 9/2. This has a great chance of coming in if the Bordeaux-factor is anything to base bets around.
While a Newcastle win with a -1 handicap also offers good value at 13/8 and a home win to-nil is worth a bet at 7/4.

All odds and markets accurate as of publication’s time and date