Newcastle United's team sheet will look a little different when supporters return to St James' Park in the coming weeks - and the same can be said of the stadium, too.
The summer break has given Newcastle the chance to improve the match day experience inside for supporters after the owners already made a number of changes around the stadium, including taking down the Sports Direct signs, bringing back Shearer's bar and moving Alan Shearer's statue.
The walls have since been painted in black and white colours inside the concourses, flags have been hung above the kiosks and new collages have been commissioned. These may seem like small changes, but it is a world away from how the stadium looked not so long ago in the Ashley era when a ripped photograph of Shay Given, arguably, the club's greatest ever goalkeeper, was hanging on the walls for so long.
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A bit of thought has gone into the new additions - the design of each flag is a nod to a colourful retro '90s kit, for example - and the collages on the walls are particularly striking. Each montage features a mash-up of club legends such as Kevin Keegan, Sir Bobby Robson and Alan Shearer; badges from years gone by; pictures of old match programmes; and the words of chants like 'Toon! Toon!' and 'We are the Geordies'. The 'Pavel is a Geordie' banner even makes an appearance on one of them.
It won't be long until supporters get to see the new-look concourses for themselves at a time when the demand for tickets is palpable. Just as there were physical queues outside the box office last week when tickets for the club's friendly double header against Atalanta and Athletic Bilbao went on sale, there were still more than 14,000 users waiting online 20 minutes after they were made available.
That follows 30,000 supporters trying to get their hand on the thousand season tickets that were released the previous week and the 22,000 fans queuing to buy memberships just a few days later.
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