Welcome back to St. James’ Park for our first game of the new year. Our goals for 2026 are to improve on our league position and to progress in all of the cup competitions that we’re in.

Having had a taste of silverware last year, we want to get that feeling back – that joy of lifting a trophy, bringing it back to the city and everything that came along with it was amazing.

To be part of the first group to do that in 70 years was special and winning a cup is a massive target for us again this term.

We also accomplished Champions League football again and we’re in a strong position to continue our journey into the knockout stages. That’s another thing that, as a club, we’ve not done in a long time and as a group, we’ve spoken about how much we want to achieve that.

Once you’re into the knockout stages, it almost becomes a whole new competition and that’s an objective that hopefully we can nail down in the coming weeks.

So there were lots of positives from the year but you never want to rest on your laurels. Now we want to build on them as we look to the future.

It’s perhaps fitting that we kick off the new year against another team who lifted silverware after a long wait. Winning the FA Cup was an incredible feat from Crystal Palace.

They had an incredible run and they’ve shown again this season that they’re a really good team. Over the last couple of years, they’ve really grown and they’ll be a difficult test for us.

But we have a sequence of home games coming up so keeping our form solid here at St. James’ Park will be vital for us if we’re going to have a successful second half of the season.

There’s optimism in the dressing room. We’ve got some massive games coming up, including a two-legged semi-final and big Champions League games as well as some extremely important league fixtures.

So there’s a lot for us to look forward to, to ensure that we attack these big moments with the right energy to gain positive outcomes.

And we’re all together. With so many fixtures in a short space of time, it really is a squad game and we will need every single player to perform at a top level each week to push ourselves and each other.

We will all need to lean on each other during this next period, with a game every three or four days, so as a group and as characters, it’s imperative that we stick together to give ourselves the best possible opportunity.