Gary McSheffrey knows how to silence the Geordie roar, having scored the early goal that launched Birmingham City towards a remarkable 5-1 win at St James’s Park in an FA Cup third round replay last January, and wants to see Newcastle United fans going home early again today.

The Birmingham winger, who scored his first goal of the season in last Sunday’s 3-2 win away to Tottenham Hotspur, was his team’s top scorer during last season’s promotion campaign and knows how fragile confidence can be. Newcastle were throbbing with optimism again after the 1-1 draw with Arsenal on Wednesday, but McSheffrey knows that, after such a disappointing run during the early part of Sam Allardyce’s reign, being acknowledged as a big club carries its vulnerabilities.

“They have those pluses, but the minus side is if we go a goal up early and silence their crowd. I am sure the boo-boys will be back again,” McSheffrey said. “That’s just part and parcel of being involved at Newcastle United. It’s such a big club and the fans want success, and when they don’t get it they let it be known - they are so passionate about their football club.

“We have got to go there and silence them because they are like a twelfth man. It takes a big player to play at Newcastle and some players have crumbled when the fans have got on their backs. When we won up there last season there was a big crowd reaction. We went 2-0 up and the fans were leaving in the first half. We have got to keep them quiet in the first 20 or 30 minutes.”

McSheffrey has been drawing on last season’s successes to boost his confidence. As Birmingham struggled to six defeats in the last seven matches of Steve Bruce’s reign, the forward started to wonder what was going wrong in his own game. So he started watching the DVD of last season’s highlights. He scored 16 times last season after a £3 million transfer from Coventry City and was widely tipped as being capable of making the step up into the top division.

However, his penalty at White Hart Lane, in Alex McLeish’s first match as manager, was his first goal in ten months. “First and foremost, it was a great win for us,” McSheffrey, 25, said. “It gives us the belief that we can go to places and get results. On a personal level it was nice to get my first goal. That’s the weight off my shoulders that I needed and we can go to Newcastle with an air of confidence.”

Chelsea will delay a decision on whether Didier Drogba has knee surgery until next week, raising the possibility that the striker could face Arsenal on December 16. He may then go under the knife and have enough time to recover before Ivory Coast’s first African Cup of Nations fixture in January. “Next week we’ll know where we are,” Avram Grant, the Chelsea first-team coach, said. He called for the competition to be moved to the summer. “We need to think about this because it’s not good for the players or the clubs,” he said.