Birmingham City return to Championship action to face Bournemouth today at Goldsands Stadium. The team will not need reminding that the last time these 2 faced circumstances were very different.
Blues were without a manager and under the care of head scout Malcolm Crosby. The 8-0 home defeat spelled the end of Crosby’s Blues career and the beginning of a new era at the club.
Gary Rowett is now well into his tenure and Birmingham are the right side of results more often than not. Which has seen a steady and impressive rise to the top end of mid-table.
Bournemouth also tried to tempt Blues winger, Demarai Gray, from St Andrews’ during the transfer window and the teenage winger has since not hit the heights of his earlier endeavors.
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Bournemouth are still high flying in the league and at this stage in the season that must be respected. They are very strong at home and have won over half of their last 20 there.
Just 4 teams positioned in the bottom half of the table have been able to obtain a victory at the Goldsands. Bournemouth are currently on a 3 game wins streak at home in the league (3-0 Boro, 4-0 Bpool, 2-1 Wolves). So you can see it is a very difficult place to go.
Birmingham meanwhile have been in free fall away from home. At first I hoped it was a blip but over the past month or so Blues have been fruitless away from home. Whether you’re in the game or not you want to be nicking points and that hasn’t happened.
I won’t bore you with going back over the results but Blues have lost 3/6 of their last away games and drawn the other 3. A return that no doubt has contributed to the stagnating end to the season.
However Blues are on the back of a good first half performance against Rotherham, at least. And, with that said I have no doubt Rowett will focus on trying to bring that back out of the players in what was a magnificent first half on Friday.
Team news
Jonathan Spector (Achilles/heel) missed the Good Friday game against Rotherham. Recent loan signing Diego Fabbrini was an unused sub against the Millers, but comes into contention. Gary Rowett has said that Demarai Gray may start on the subsitutes’ bench because of his recent heavy schedule of games with England U19s.
taken from bcfc.com
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