
Kieran Trippier could have been trading the Champions League for the Championship. When his Newcastle career had the falsest of false starts, his debut a dispiriting defeat to Cambridge, his new team in the drop zone, the temptation was to wonder quite what he had swapped Atletico Madrid for. Sixteen months later, the answer is becoming clearer: with one more win, Trippier will be back in the Champions League.
For Dan Burn, Newcastle’s takeover and the concurrent injections of ambitions and funds initially brought a different sense. By his own admission, it seemed his chance of playing for Newcastle, the club he supported in his boyhood in Blyth, was over. Now an unconventional journey from non-league to Champions League will be completed with one more victory.