Alan Pardew: "I will admit I'm still smarting, despite ending that bad run with a 1-0 win over QPR on Saturday.
"I'm not happy either. Although we have won, the away form hasn't been great, so there will be two teams with a little bit to prove, two managers smarting a little bit with their teams.
"It will make for a really professional game.
"Sometimes on Boxing Day, you can get a loose game - I don't think this will be.
"The Van Persie incident understandably made headlines, although I think Sir Alex's comments were made in the heat of the moment.
"Retrospective action is important because as we saw with [Everton's Marouane] Fellaini the other day at Stoke, children shouldn't be seeing incidents like that on TV.
"I think the one with Van Persie was perhaps not as bad as Alex at first imagined. Sometimes from the sideline, it looks a lot worse at the time.
"I'm not sure whether there will be action taken for that, but certainly elbows and off-the-ball incidents, that's a good feature that the FA have brought in."