THE Carabao Cup has been memorable and painful in equal measure for Eddie Howe since he took charge of Newcastle United almost three years ago.

And while the final defeat to Manchester United is the obvious stand-out memory in the competition, last season's "missed opportunity" against Wednesday night's opponents Chelsea was particularly hard to take.

Newcastle were seconds away from booking their spot in the last four last season only to concede a stoppage time leveller at Stamford Bridge, where they'd go on to lose a penalty shoot-out.

For Howe, it's hard not to look back on that game as the ultimate what could have been. Had the Magpies seen out the quarter final victory, they'd have faced Championship neighbours Middlesbrough over two legs in the semi-finals and an injury-ravaged Liverpool in the final.

"It was a painful one," Howe admits, reflecting on that Stamford Bridge defeat.

"Right at the end of the game, we almost felt we were in the semi finals and the game turned so quickly. They scored, it went to penalties and we hadn't really recovered mentally from conceding so late.

"It was a missed opportunity for us because to get to the latter stages of any competition, we felt we had one foot in there.

"This game is totally different, they're a different team and manager, but you learn from those moments, you take them with you, the scars and experiences of those moments. That helps you and makes you a better team. All those experiences will hopefully help us."

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Newcastle will also have to learn from the experiences of Sunday's defeat in the capital when they face Chelsea for the second time in four days, particularly their failure to deal with Cole Palmer.

With Enzo Maresca set to shuffle his pack tomorrow, it's not clear whether his superstar forward will play at St James' Park, but if he does the Magpies need to do a better job of coping with the former Manchester City man, who set up Chelsea's first goal and scored their winner.

"You can see he's playing with real confidence," said Howe.

"He was a player we probably didn't do enough to stop, especially on transitions, not so much in other phases of play.

"He created the first goal in that fashion and scored the second in that fashion. He's an outstanding talent, we probably didn't deal with him,

"We'll learn those lessons, analyse, pass the message on to the players and endeavour to do better. But it's not about one player."

With Howe promising to go strong, Maresca can probably have a good guess at what Newcastle's starting XI will be. Predicting the visiting starting XI is not as easy, which means there's an element of unpredictability for Howe.

He said: “The analysis everybody has on each other, I think there are very few surprises but this is one game when they could make wholesale changes, or one or two changes , we really don’t know.

"We will plan for what we do know and we will plan for what we need to do, maybe more than what the opposition will do. We know that there are certain aspects of our performance we need to get right to win so that will be our focus.”

With Newcastle languishing in the bottom half of the Premier League table and qualification for the Champions League already looking like a stretch, Howe was asked whether Wednesday night's game can be classed as season defining.

He said: "You can call it what you want, I’ve got no issue with that.

"From our side, we know every game is hugely important. Every game has a bearing on your season in terms of momentum, feelings, emotions.

"We know we need a result. We know we need a performance. If we can get both together, this would be a great time to do it. We have two massive home games to come and I would love to think St James’ will be absolutely rocking for both games. We need the players to thrive in that environment."