Birmingham are first midweek league visitors

Last updated : 17 September 2013 By Tony Scholes

Hopefully everyone will have got over Saturday's heartbreaker. We thought we had it won until that late, fortunate goal from Jordan Rhodes meant a third successive draw against our local rivals.

Now we turn our attentions to Birmingham in what will be the first midweek league game of the season, and our first home midweek league game since that horrible run of games in February and March last season when we won just two points and scored only one goal in games against Middlesbrough, Huddersfield, Barnsley and Hull.

That Hull game, the last of them, was on a Monday night and played in front of the television cameras. It was awful, as were the other three, and ended in a 1-0 defeat against a team that hardly looked Premier League candidates.

Junior Stanislas will be hoping to get a start after his goal on Saturday

Since that game we've played seven league games, plus the COCUP tie against Preston, at home with four of them won and four drawn. That run of seven home league games without defeat is the best since we had a similar run in 2010, the last game of the Premier League season and the first six games of the 2010/11 season. The last time we bettered it was a run of eight league games, and all of them won, spanning the promotion and Premier League seasons.

The last time we won a game under the Turf Moor lights was last November when a Charlie Austin goal gave us a 1-0 win against Leeds in what was Sean Dyche's second game in charge.

There is no doubt that the next one could well be tonight if we are able to show the same sort of form we've done this season and another performance like the one that almost won the derby on Saturday would surely see us get that win.

The player everyone has been wanting to talk to since that game is Junior Stanislas. He came on as a substitute and scored what undoubtedly will be a serious goal of the season contender.

He'll certainly be involved tonight whether that's starting or from the bench and he said: "We're going to go into every game looking to win them starting with Birmingham.

"It's obviously a long season in the Championship, it's more of a consistency thing and picking up as many points as you can.

"I think, obviously, the teams that are below us, you've got to be looking at those to be picking up maximum points but there are a lot of good teams in the division and I'm sure it will be a long, tough season."

There won't be many changes to the squad, if any, and it wouldn't be a surprise to see the same eleven start, and that would see us line up: Tom Heaton, Kieran Trippier, Michael Duff, Jason Shackell, Ben Mee, Scott Arfield, Dean Marney, David Jones, Michael Kightly, Danny Ings, Sam Vokes. Subs from: Alex Cisak, Kevin Long, Danny Lafferty, David Edgar, Brian Stock, Junior Stanislas, Keith Treacy, Ryan Noble.

Birmingham haven't made the sort of start to the season that they might have hoped for. With six games gone they have won only once, beating Yeovil 1-0 at Huish Park on the second Saturday of the season, and they've also drawn one game, at home to Ipswich.

They've been beset with injuries but there is some good news on the horizon for them. All of Nikola Zigic (back), David Murphy (knee), Koby Arthur (groin), Will Packwood (broken leg)  and Akwasi Asante (hamstring) are on their way back to full fitness and all five players for their development squad against Leeds yesterday in the under-21 league.

Zigic and Asante scored in a 2-0 win but Asante is the only one of the five who has travelled to Turf Moor with the squad. They are also without Hayden Mullins and Neal Eardley. Mullins has a calf problem while Eardley is out long term following knee surgery.

They are also without captain Paul Robinson tonight. He's serving a one match ban after collecting his fifth yellow card of the season at Loftus Road on Saturday. He'll be replaced by either Mitchell Hancox or Shane Ferguson.

Birmingham's likely team, which will include former Claret Wade Elliott, is: Darren Randolph, Kyle Bartley, Dan Burn, Shane Ferguson, Paul Caddis, Jonathan Spector, Tom Adeyemi, Wade Elliott, Chris Burke, Lee Novak, Andy Shinnie. Subs from: Colin Doyle, Darren Ambrose, Callum Reilly, Olly Lee, Reece Brown, Peter Lovendkrands, Mitchell Hancox, Akwasi Asante.

 

Last Time They Were Here

Last season's home game against Birmingham was memorable for all the wrong reasons. We went into it on a run of three consecutive league wins but saw that run come to an end in a 2-1 defeat that ended with us having only ten players as Dean Marney was wrongly sent off by referee Darren Drysdale.

We didn't play anything like as well as we'd just done in the three previous games against Sheffield Wednesday, Crystal Palace and Millwall, when a win would have given us our best January for 112 years.

Dean Marney was sent off with half an hour to go

We only played well in two short spells but the game was dominated by Drysdale. He let it be known very early in the game that he wanted to be the star of the show and he made damn sure he was.

Some heavy snow in the area left some supporters concerned as to whether the game would be on or not but once the approaches were cleared it was given the go ahead on a pitch that was perfect.

Manager Sean Dyche kept the team that had played at Millwall but fit again Kevin Long replaced Tom Anderson on the bench and there was one other change of substitute with latest signing Dane Richards preferred to Marvin Bartley.

We started well, particularly with Kieran Trippier and Ross Wallace linking up well down the right. Three times they presented Danny Ings with chances but three times he headed off target.

But midway through the first half we gave a very soft goal away. Curtis Davies was able to get between Jason Shackell and Sam Vokes to head home unchallenged from a corner. We'd done well up to that point but we were disappointing for the remainder of the first half.

The home crowd reserved their vitriol of Drysdale at half time but they hadn't seen anything yet.

We were bright at the start of the second half. Ings hit the underside of the bar after getting the better of Steven Caldwell and then Paul Robinson fouled Junior Stanislas in the box with Wallace converting a penalty that Drysdale missed completely only to award it when he saw the assistant place his flag across his chest.

Just a few minutes later we were down to ten men with Marney sent off. So ridiculous was the decision that Birmingham boss Lee Clark admitted later that he thought it was his player being sent off.

It left us to fight for half an hour with ten men and we all but did it. In the last minute of normal time Nikola Zigic flicked the ball on for Marlon King to hammer home on the volley after he'd been left with too much space.

The only good news to come out of this was that the FA agreed that the sending off was a nonsense and rescinded it.

The teams were;

Burnley: Lee Grant, Kieran Trippier, David Edgar, Jason Shackell, Danny Lafferty, Dean Marney, Chris McCann, Ross Wallace (Brian Stock 78), Danny Ings (Keith Treacy 90+1), Junior Stanislas (Martin Paterson 82), Sam Vokes. Subs not used: Brian Jensen, Luke O'Neill, Kevin Long, Dane Richards.

Birmingham: Jack Butland, Paul Caddis, Curtis Davies, Steven Caldwell, Paul Robinson, Chris Burke, Morgaro Gomis, Callum Reilly (Nikola Zigic 69), Wade Elliott, Rob Hall (Nathan Redmond 54), Marlon King. Subs not used: Colin Doyle, Mitch Hancox, Hayden Mullins, Ravel Morrison, Peter Lovendkrands.

 

Previous Games against Birmingham

 

Last 20 Years
Season Comp Ven Res Att  Scorers
2000/01 Division 1 a 2-3 19,641 Cox, Weller
    h 0-0 17,057  
2001/02 Division 1 a 3-2 18,426 Little (2), I Moore
    h 0-1 13,504  
2006/07 Championship h 1-2 12,889 McCann
    a 1-0 28,777 Spicer
2008/09 Championship h 1-1 13,809 McCann
    a 1-1 16,763 Paterson
2009/10 Premier League h 2-1 20,102 Fletcher, Bikey
    a 1-2 24,578 Thompson
2011/12 Championship a 1-2 16,253 Bartley
    h 1-3 13,221 Ings
2012/13 Championship a 2-2 17,284 Ings, Wallace
    a 1-2 11,576 Wallace(pen)

 

Click HERE to see all previous results against Birmingham