Newcastle must overcome the might of Paris Saint-Germain and a mounting injury list if the Magpies' first foray into the Champions League for 20 years is not to come to a premature end tonight.
Damaging back-to-back defeats to Borussia Dortmund have left Eddie Howe's men sitting bottom of a difficult Group F, also featuring last season's semi-finalists AC Milan.
Newcastle must avoid defeat in Paris to have any chance of reaching the last 16.
Qualification looked well within the grasp of Howe's side when they humbled PSG 4-1 on Tyneside in October. But since then, an injury crisis has taken its toll, and the Saudi-backed club's failure to splash the cash in the transfer window may well come back to haunt them.
Sandro Tonali, their top signing, has been slapped with a 10-month ban for breaching betting rules and Harvey Barnes has been out injured. The young full-backs Lewis Hall and Tino Livramento have only been in action due to injuries to others.
The decision to be more conservative in the transfer market is now coming back to bite, even if Newcastle showed remarkable resolve to thrash Chelsea 4-1 on Saturday without 13 first-team players.
Sven Botman, Dan Burn, Callum Wilson, Joe Willock and Sean Longstaff are among the other key players likely to miss out on Paris again.
The fear for Howe is that his depleted squad have already emptied the tank ahead of facing a PSG side led by Kylian Mbappe.
Eddie Howe
