Newcastle host Manchester United for this English Premier Round 19 clash at the legendary St. James' Park in this early Tuesday morning Beijing time. This is the only match today in the most competitive league on the planet. Let's take a closer look at it betting-wise..

Technically, Newcastle are now the richest club in the World. As many of my fans have probably heard Newcastle were finally taken over by the disputed Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF) a few months ago which means that Newcastle, a struggling club both financially and on the pitch in recent years - have just come the wealthiest club in the World as PIF has almost unlimited funds to spend on the club in an attempt to reach global success and good PR for Saudi Arabia. How much they will spend and when - or what exactly is PIF's strategy moving forward is not really known in detail at this point.. However, one can assume they will invest heavily in the team in the near future - most likely the project will really take off next season but some new players are expected to join in the January transfer window. Despite not all fans - or perhaps not all players either - loving the new main owners the idea of a bright future must be a huge boost for the club as whole but we can not deny the fact that at the moment Newcastle are, dare I say "a mess" on the pitch. I must say I, along with many other analysts - and most certainly the players themselves -  expected a lot more from the team after the big news and after Eddie Howe taking over the club on the 8th of November. Newcastle did get the traditional a few matches' boost in November but pretty soon the harsh reality hit the Newcastle and their fans.

Newcastle have won just one of their 18 matches in the Premier League which is of course a hilariously bad record! They do have seven draws though, and ten points in the bank at the moment. The same number as Norwich - the worst team in this league. I would rate Newcastle as narrowly better than Norwich and have lowered their power rating that illustrates the teams' raw (overall) class compared to other teams in the league  - on a scale from 1-100. For several months I rated the hosts as the third worst team in the league but Watford - despite most certainly not being a good team - must now be rated higher than Newcastle. The gap to "safety" -  meaning a position to avoid relegation -  is only three points, so the hosts of course still everything to play for as only approximately half of the scheduled matches have been played. 

To say something positive about the hosts they do fight hard and seem to have a pretty good team spirit. This is not always the case with bottom teams with understandably low confidence. At the end of the day it all comes down to the fact the Newcastle only have a few players who really possess the sufficient skills and understanding of the game needed to successfully compete at this level! Their main problem is the very vulnerable defense. They have scored a respectable 18 goals - a lot more than for example Norwich but the amount of goals allowed - 41 - is of course way too high.. Newcastle have been capable of some pretty-solid defending at times versus mediocre or lowly teams but versus good teams their weaknesses have been exposed in a brutal way. Against Liverpool the expected goals numbers were 3.23 for Pool and 0.24 for the visitors. The final score was 3-1, but as we can see Newcastle really did not even deserve a goal.. It is pretty rare to see expected goals numbers of over 3.00 goals at this level, and the fact that in their most recent match Newcastle allowed Manchester City to create a whopping 3.84 at their home stadium but recorded a pathetic 0.15 goals themselves tells a lot! Of course, Man City are a top-3 team on the planet but these statistics still illustrate just how limited a team Newcastle are. Man United are, of course, clearly worse than Liverpool and City but still the difference in class is still  substantial. Expected goals (xG) and expected points (xPTS) statistics are one of the very basic tools that I use determine the probabilities - often eventually listed as a %estimation for my pick to win -  to offer my fans as valuable info as possible! There are, of course, a lot more tools, statistics data processing etc. needed to succeed as a pro sports bettor. Continuous improvement is must in this business.

Most of my long-term fans probably remember that I have written very negatively about Manchester United this season and have posted many picks opposing them - in fact winning all except for the most recent one when they were able to beat Arsenal 3-2 at home in a pretty balanced clash. Manchester United finally sacked their manager, the club legend, Norwegian Ole Gunnar Solskjær some weeks ago! I did write pretty critically about him on many analyses before and as the season progressed it became more and more evident that he did not have the skills or charisma to coach/lead one of the biggest and richest clubs on the planet. Ralf Rangnick is the interim manager for ManU and I expect ManU to improve further during the latter part of the season but changes are never fast in World-class football. However, Ralf is a great manager and I do rate ManU as the 4th best team in the league at the moment! The harsh reality is that ManU's football still lacks some structure and they are unable to press, especially opponents - in any reasonable way except for short periods of time. C. Ronaldo has hardly done  any defending at all, not to mention Paul Pogba. Let's see how Ralf will handle Ronaldo in the future.. Pogba will miss today's match, important Raphael Varane as well as Cavani and Martial are doubtful. However, having once again criticized ManU I want to stress that Newcastle are not a team able to take advantage of the Red Devils' weaknesses..

To sum up, Man United are clearly over 70% favorites to win even away from home. Man United to win are a very solid selection for my growing fan-base!