Looking Ahead to Birmingham
An odd time to be a Birmingham City fan. The euphoria of gazumping their neighbours in a cup quarter-final was met with some rather stern faces in the nation’s media yesterday. Instead of the glowing reports they might’ve received on any normal evening, they’re being partly blamed for the failure of the World Cup bid. All that pwopa norty business at St. Andrews couldn’t have been more ill-timed. It certainly didn’t adhere to Call Me Dave’s vision of a country who could open its arms to the world and give it a long, loving embrace. More like a swift headbutt. Hard dice for the majority of them- those who realised they were watching a game of football and not participating in the last days of Rome. Victims of circumstance, timing and the odd philistine who’d wandered in amongst the thousands of well-meaning supporters, just there to sing a song or two and watch their team win. Hard dice, indeed. That said, by the sounds of it, the Russians had it just about wrapped up by breakfast-time anyway. So it probably made no odds at all. Just like the Panorama exposé or the article in The Times. Not a chuffing bit of difference.
But, nevermind the Bolsheviks. It’s Tottenham we’re here to talk about. Permitting a wintry downpour of biblical proportions, it’s us who drop anchor and head for St. Andrews this weekend. With a good bit of whiff behind us, too. Three league wins on the bounce and qualification for the last-sixteen of the Euro pot for good measure. As Novembers go, this year’s is going to be tricky to beat. Gee whizz.
Same will be true of Birmingham. Interestingly the Midlanders have lost as many games as we have this season but are sitting in a modest fourteenth. You don’t need to be John Forbes Nash to workout that they spend an awful lot of their weekends sharing points. Charitable folk, as they are. Even more telling is that four of these draws have ended goalless- two on the road, two at home. The short version, then- heroic keeper, thrifty defence, pony strikeforce. That looks to be the way of it. Worse than ours.
For us, as ever, injuries are bloody rife. Van der Vaart and Kaboul sit atop the ever-growing list with hamstrings and hips not as they should be. Two weeks each, so we’re told. Although Kaboul’s assertions have yet to be verified by anything other than a Twitter update. Unless I’ve missed a trick and he’s now got his doctor’s note rubber-stamped. The good news is that Dawson returns to the squad after his international breakdown. And not a moment too soon. This could be the biggest comeback since we last visited The Emirates. Let’s hope that if his services are called for, it’s not in the manner of someone being dropped into a warzone. A nice gentle last twenty while we’re three to the good should do it.
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