Tottenham Hotspur will travel to Birmingham City’s home ground to play in a stadium that has been the subject of much focus of late.
A primitive and ugly display of celebration for the Blues against their rivals, Aston Villa saw the Birmingham supporters run onto the pitch and to the opposite side before the game had ended to mock the team who also call West Midlands their home.
Birmingham boss, Alex McLeish lamented the scenes that were staged on the Blues’ pitch. “Running onto the pitch is just a no-go in modern-day football”, rued the Blues boss. The incident is said to have had a much larger repercussion than considered, as
critics argue that it may have played a role in England losing their World Cup 2018 bid to Russia.
Birmingham will play West Ham United at Wembley for their Carling Cup match, but must first face high flying Tottenham Hotspur. The Spurs last won against Birmingham in the dying minutes of the game last season and seemed to re-enact that feat against Liverpool
last Sunday. Harry Redknapp’s team scored against the Reds in stoppage time to ensure Kop humiliation at White Hart Lane with the final score of 2-1. The Spurs will be looking to build on their fantastic Premier League form and UEFA Champions League form.
They have managed to secure their progression into the knockout round of sixteen in Europe’s elite competition in style, by topping their group and defeating current UEFA Champions League title winners Inter Milan. The white outfit have managed to win all
of their last three games and are only a point away from fourth placed Manchester City in the English Premier League table.
Birmingham’s best feat this season has perhaps been their toppling of title defenders Chelsea in a match which saw McLeish’s men sustain a victory over Ancelotti’s team by a goal to nil. Apart from that match, the Blues have managed to secure draws against
Fulham and Manchester City while playing away from home. It can be said that for all of their high flying wonder, the Spurs have a leaky defence and the statistic to support that claim is through their inability to maintain a clean sheet for fourteen games.
Both sets of fans can expect a goal in the last minutes of the game, as the Sky Sports website states ‘there has been a 90th minute goal in five of the last six Premier League games between Birmingham and Tottenham, including each of the last four’.
Tottenham certainly have the immediate advantage over the home side as they are currently sitting comfortably in fifth position with twenty five points, whereas Birmingham City are in fourteenth position, having acquired only seventeen points from fifteen
games. The Spurs have won seven games this season, with the Blues managing less than half of that number (3). Tottenham have drawn four matches, while Birmingham have drawn half that amount. Both sides have lost four matches this season. Tottenham have conceded
two more goals than Birmingham’s eighteen this campaign and scored twenty three compared to City’s sixteen.
McLeish has praised his players as they have lost only one game from their previous nine. He made the following comments to the press, saying “I don't think we've played badly at all this season. We struggled to get some points in certain games that I felt
we deserved more out of. But for that, we'd have been higher up the table." He complimented his side by using the example of how critics had written off the Blues’ chances of obtaining even a point from clashes against Chelsea, Fulham and Manchester City,
explaining that “We took five points (from those three games), so that's a measure of the quality.”
Tottenham’s injury list includes 'Huddlestone (ankle), Dos Santos, King & Woodgate (all groin), Kaboul (hip), Jenas (calf), O'Hara (back), van der Vaart (hamstring) and Birmingham will be without Hleb, who has a calf injury and McFadden with a knee problem.
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