[Ska'dForLife-WBA]

Well, we're not quite as stuffed as the Christmas turkey yet, but Saturday's VAR-assisted slaughter at the Hawthorns pretty much tore out our giblets, fed them to the dog and then turned the oven up to gas mark 4. Now the hunt for points takes us on the road for a week, with back-to-back fixtures at Newcastle and Manchester City.

For a few days it looked like a Covid outbreak might spare us the St James's Park trip, but at the time of writing the match is set to go ahead. Having had their last fixture postponed, Newcastle are well rested, and also well placed for another comfortable season in mid-table, chalking up fairly regular wins in recent months. Our last visit there, en route to relegation in 2018, ended in a 1-0 win that kept us alive for a little longer, and there's no question that we'll need more of that magic this time round.

And Man City? Well, we all know how that one goes. Our record against them, home and away, is currently an unbroken chain of 14 defeats on the trot. In all competitions, it's a winless streak of 17. At the Etihad we haven't picked up a single point since August 2005, and have never won. Our last triumph over City in Manchester came when Neil Clement and Big Dave handed us a 2-1 victory at Maine Road on 1st February 2003. If you tot up the scores in this fixture over the last decade, it stands at Albion 9-42 Man City. And to make matters worse, after an iffy start, they've just started to pick up steam and climb the table.

Time for a Christmas miracle? Give us four or five of them and we might be in business.