Eddie Howe wants his Newcastle United team to make history in this season's Champions League, as they look to win their first-ever knockout tie in the competition.

Newcastle make the 2,529-mile trip to Azerbaijan on Wednesday, for the first leg of their knockout-round play-off tie against Qarabag.

It is the longest distance ever travelled by an English team for a Champions League match, but despite those exertions, the Magpies are still overwhelming favourites.

The Opta supercomputer assigns them a 64.3% chance of winning the away leg, with Qarabag's chances of victory rated at a mere 15.7%. Howe's side are assigned a 90% probability of reaching the round of 16, which they have never previously accomplished. 

Their previous best Champions League run came when the format included a second group stage, in 2002-03, and they finished third in their pool behind Barcelona and Inter.

This tie is the only one, among this season's eight play-off match-ups, to feature two teams that have never previously played a Champions League knockout tie.

"It means everything to us," Howe told reporters on Tuesday. "You look at the history of the club – this is a slightly new opportunity for us to get to the last 16.

"We want to turn these moments into history and into moments people talk about for a long time.

"It would be an incredible achievement, and we're trying to embrace it in that way and look at the excitement and the possibility, rather than feel too much of the burden and the pressure of the occasion."

Newcastle are in the midst of a gruelling schedule, with a Premier League trip to Manchester City sandwiched between the two legs of their European tie.

But Howe does not intend to shuffle his pack, saying: "We will play our strongest team in the sense that we will try to win the game. 

"There'll be no thinking of the schedule ahead. This game, in isolation, is hugely important."

Qarabag finished 22nd in the league phase to sneak into the play-offs, and this will be their third meeting with Premier League opposition this term following a 2-2 draw with Chelsea and a 6-0 defeat to Liverpool.

"You can look at the scoreline and make one assumption and then look at the game and get another, different, impression," Howe said of Newcastle's opponents. 

"The Chelsea game, I thought, was a really hard-fought game between two good teams, but it was a really good one for us to watch to see the level of team we're going up against. We are certainly getting across to the players in the next two days that there's no complacency."