We look ahead to Tuesday night’s League Cup semi-final first leg at the Emirates Stadium with our Arsenal vs Newcastle prediction and preview. Can the Magpies take a positive result back to St James’ Park for the second leg next month?
Arsenal vs Newcastle Stats: The Key Insights
- Arsenal are the favourites to win this semi-final first leg according to the Opta supercomputer, with the Gunners victorious in 63.1% of pre-match simulations.
- Newcastle have lost 12 of their last 13 away games against Arsenal in all competitions (D1) since a 1-0 win in November 2010 in the Premier League.
- Alexander Isak scored Newcastle’s winner against Arsenal in the Premier League this season – the last Magpies player to score against the Gunners in two different games in a single campaign was Laurent Robert in 2001-02.
The first EFL Cup semi-final match of 2024-25 takes place at the Emirates Stadium on Tuesday night, as Arsenal host Newcastle United in London.
The Gunners have home advantage for this semi-final first leg, and will be looking to improve on their poor run of first-leg results at this stage of the competition. They haven’t won any of their first-leg contests in any of their last seven League Cup semi-finals (D4 L3).
They have, however, won all four of their previous meetings with Newcastle in the competition without conceding a single goal (scoring 12). The last of those was in the 2010-11 fourth round when they thrashed the Magpies 4-0 at St James’ Park.
Of course, much more recently, Newcastle had the better of Arsenal in a Premier League game at the same stadium. The Gunners struggled throughout that match, with Alexander Isak scoring the only goal in a 1-0 win on 2 November.
Isak is a man in form, scoring in 11 of his last 14 competitive appearances for Newcastle (13 goals in total), including in each of his last four games (six goals). Should he score in this match, he’d become the first Newcastle player to score against Arsenal in two different games in a single season since Laurent Robert in 2001-02.
Arsenal have their own man in form up front, though. Despite not scoring in the 1-1 draw at Brighton on Saturday, Gabriel Jesus has scored six goals in his last five games for Mikel Arteta’s side, while his record in the EFL Cup is fantastic. He’s been involved in 13 goals in his last nine starts in the competition (11 goals, 2 assists), netting a hat-trick against Crystal Palace in this season’s quarter-final.
This is only Newcastle’s third appearance in the League Cup semi-finals, but they’ve progressed to the final in each of the previous two (1975-76 vs Tottenham and 2022-23 vs Southampton). A place in the final will give them the chance to win their first ever League Cup, while they haven’t won a major domestic honour since the 1955 FA Cup.
Arsenal last won this competition back in 1993, but the Gunners have been in great form in front of goal in the League Cup so far this season, scoring 11 goals in their wins over Bolton Wanderers (5-1), Preston North End (3-0) and Palace (3-2). They’ve never scored 3+ goals in four consecutive games in the competition.
Bukayo Saka will definitely be missing for Arsenal, with his thigh injury set to keep him out for a few months, while Ben White, Takehiro Tomiyasu and Raheem Sterling also look set to miss out. Kai Havertz has missed the last two games through illness but may return for this game, while Ethan Nwaneri came off at half-time against Brighton with a muscle injury after opening the scoring and could miss this first leg. Jurriën Timber will return to the squad following suspension, however.
Newcastle will be missing important duo Fabian Schär and Bruno Guimarães through suspension, while Sven Botman will face a fitness test after coming off in Saturday’s 2-1 victory at Tottenham Hotspur.
Arsenal vs Newcastle Head-to-Head
Newcastle haven’t enjoyed the majority of their trips to the Emirates Stadium in recent years, having lost 12 of their last 13 away games against Arsenal in all competitions (D1) since a 1-0 win in November 2010 in the Premier League.
Their last trip to the Emirates ended in a 4-1 defeat in February 2024, as Eddie Howe’s side were 4-0 down by the 69th minute before a late Joe Willock consolation.
Newcastle’s 1-0 win over Arsenal in the Premier League earlier this season saw the Gunners restricted to just one shot on target in the entire game – their joint fewest in a competitive match so far in 2024-25.
Arsenal vs Newcastle Prediction
The Opta supercomputer is making Arsenal the favourites to win this match and gain a first-leg advantage ahead of the return game at St James’ Park on 5 February. The Gunners won 63.1% of pre-match simulations, with Newcastle winning 17.3% and a draw being played out in 19.6% of sims.
Opta Power Rankings
The Opta Power Rankings are a global team ranking system. They assign an ability score to over 13,000 domestic football teams. This score is on a scale between zero and 100, where zero is the worst-ranked team in the world and 100 is the best team in the world.
Ahead of kick-off on Tuesday night, here is the Opta Power Ranking for both sides.
Subscribe to our football newsletter to receive exclusive weekly content. You should also follow our social accounts over on X, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.
