Birmingham City vs Manchester City: Looking to take advantage of rivals failings
Birmingham City remain 15th after the 9 Saturday games fail to see the teams immediately below them get a win and face Manchester City who will also be heartened at remaining sixth and will now look to take adavntage of slips by Liverpool, Spurs, Sunderland and Villa.
Birmingham's main difficulty this season will be in scoring goals. The team is compact and works hard and defends as a unit and as such rarely concedes more than the odd goal - but this does stifle the creativity somewhat. Birmingham's defensive record is better than Spurs, Liverpool or Arsenal - but Portsmouth have scored more goals than Birmingham. As have West Ham. And Blackburn (etc). But against a Man City side with a hugely expensive front-line it is not the moment for Birmingham to be more expansive and given the weekends results a home draw would be a great result; and a win would push Birmingham into twelfth. Like Wolves, Birminghams' games are often determined by the first goal - Birmingham have lost all six that they have conceded the first goal in - and won the three that they have scored first in (all second half goals).
Manchester City have designs on the top four and in that respect Saturday's games could hardly have gone better. I think it is safe to assume that Man United and Chelsea will be the top two teams this season, with only Arsenal looking capable of staying with them. So of the clutch of teams with aspirations on the other Champions' League places, Everton already look out of it, Villa and Sunderland drew and Liverpool and Spurs lost - so Man City can move into a clear fourth place with a win today, with a game in hand to boot. But Man City has drawn the last three games and hasn't kept a clean sheet since August - Mark Hughes will be desperate to ratchet up the pressure at the top in Birmingham.
Birmingham City vs Manchester City; Kick Off 4:00pm 01 Nov 2009
Prediction Panel
Our panel contains both Squarefootball writers and readers, the writers are marked: (sqf).
Dave Blackburn : TBC
Chris Cox : 2 - 1
Graham Enwright : 0 - 2
Sue Gardener : 0 - 3
Chris Goodwin : 0 - 2
Paul Grech (sqf) : TBC
Colin Illingworth (sqf) : 1 - 2
Hugh Larkin (sqf) : 0 - 1
Peter Lee : 1 - 1
Don McMahon : 0 - 2
Antony Melvin (sqf) : 0 - 2
Paul O'Meara (sqf) : 1 - 1
Dave Nash : 1 - 1
Stephen Orford (sqf) : 0 - 2
Tony Ratton : 1 - 2
Peter Rendle : 1 - 2
Dan Taylor : 2 - 3
Nick Tomkins : TBC
Bill Urban (sqf) : TBC
Andy Wakeman : 0 - 2
Isaac Williams : TBC
Mark Williams : 1 - 1
Panel Verdict
The panel is expecting a 2-0 Manchester City win.
Home: 1; Draw: 4; Away: 12; TBC: 5.
* Do we have it right, or do you know better? Please don't bother with derisory comments on the predictions after the match - unless you also pulled us up before it!
