EARLIER this season, when Preston North End paid a visit to Tyneside in the EFL Cup, Newcastle United hit them for six. That was when the Magpies were in the thick of a nine-match winning run, with confidence flowing through the team.

Tonight, in the Championship, Preston are back, only this time Newcastle have been feeling the pressure after failing to win any of their last three games; and they have won only two in six.

The dip at the business end of the season had threatened to ruin the drive for an automatic promotion spot as well as the title charge, but the pressure was lifted without kicking a ball on Saturday.

Now Newcastle will hope the signs of nerves in previous fixtures, particularly at Ipswich last Monday, have been eased after Huddersfield’s crushing defeat against Fulham and Reading’s loss to Nottingham Forest. Can they just go out and play with freedom and style against Preston?

Now victory this evening for Rafa Benitez’s side will mean a top two place is guaranteed ahead of the final two games. Midfielder Isaac Hayden is looking forward to getting the job done.

He said: “We’ve come back, we have been back on the training field and we are not down in the dumps. It can be made a little bit overdramatic sometimes. If you lose a game you can almost think about it too much.

“It’s a home game, 50,000 fans backing us, so there is nothing to worry about, nothing to be scared about. As long as we are confident and go into the game with the right mindset, with the right game plan, which I’m 100 per cent sure we will do, then there will be no problems.”

Hayden went up through the play-offs with Hull last season. To get the promotion picture over and done with, without the stress of the end of season shoot-out, will be a huge bonus to him.

He said: “It’s not something that we are thinking of at all. We have three games, nine points, if we win all three it’s done. Simple as that. It could be done even before that. It could be done on Monday night.

“For us, it’s about making sure we have the confidence levels to go again on Monday night. And play the game we want to play and see what happens from there.”

The chances of Newcastle winning the Championship are slim, even though Brighton’s advantage could be cut down to four points tonight after the Seagulls lost on Friday. The Magpies camp would prefer to go up in style, but Hayden will be satisfied to get over the line.

The 22-year-old said: “As professionals, you obviously want to win. I didn’t come here to not win the league. But where we are at the moment, obviously it is not down to us. It’s down to another team.

“We just have to take it game by game. Focus on ourselves and take everyone else out of the equation. It’s not about Brighton, or Huddersfield or Reading any more. It’s just about us and getting the job done.

“We’ve got to this stage where we are now. You only have to look at Villa, Norwich – those are the teams who got relegated. You only need to look where they are. It shows how tough this league is to get out of at the first time of asking.

“We just have to make sure we play like we did against Leeds.

“That was a good display from us. As long as we can get back to that kind of performance level, I don’t think we should have a problem.”

And if Newcastle can do the job it will be the justification for Hayden to move to Tyneside from Arsenal, when he had opportunities to stay in the Premier League.

He said: “It didn’t quite happen [at Arsenal]. I have not played in the Premier League, so for me, that’s the ultimate goal, to be a regular Premier League player. If you ask any young player who is playing football, they would want to be in the Premier League.

“For me. It would be fantastic to get back up and actually get a proper chance of being a Premier League player.

“I don’t think this club at the start of the season wanted to stay in the Championship.

“It was a club of great ambition and with the manager we have got here, I knew from the start that the aim was to get into the Premier League - the ambition.”