Micky Quinn: Matt Ritchie and Jamaal Lascelles will give Brighton tough time – opinion

Former Newcastle striker Micky Quinn is looking forward to his old side trip to play Brighton in the Premier League on Sunday, and marked out Matt Ritchie and Jamaal Lascelles destroying the newly promoted Championship side.

Quinn predicts the Magpies will make it four in a row and continue their brilliant start to the season, after losing the first two Premier League fixtures.

Writing in his column in The Chronicle, Quinn was quoted: “Newcastle United are bang in form right now and I am full of confidence ahead of the trip to the south coast.

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“The way Rafa Benitez has Newcastle playing at the moment, I can’t see anything but a fourth win on the bounce.

“Rafa has them so well organised and then counter attacking at such pace that teams are struggling to cope with them.

“Then there’s set pieces, where Jamaal Lascelles looks deadly from at the moment because Matt Ritchie’s delivery has just been so good recently.”

F/W’s view

Newcastle’s improved a lot this season. After a poor summer of business, and the Toons boss Rafa Benitez not happy, to losing the first two matches of the season, things were looking bad for Newcastle a few weeks ago. Now sitting fourth in the Premier League table and they’ve had all week off to prepare for the Brighton game because they got knocked out of the League Cup by Nottingham Forest.

In hindsight, Brighton lost on Tuesday night to Bournemouth after extra time, and are likely to be tired. Brighton will be hoping to beat their big rivals from last season and nail their place at the right end of the table. Brighton are unlikely to remain at the middle of the table at the end of the season, but every win is a step closer to Premier League safety, and that’s the real goal this season.

Micky Quinn is also right to pick out Ritchie and Lascelles for praise – the duo has been brilliant and could combine again to secure the three points at the for Benitez at the Amex.