Key player Vs. Reading

Blues return to action tomorrow night as they entertain Japp Stam`s Reading at St Andrews with Gianfranco Zola still searching for his first win.

The Royals are flying high in third place and are on the back of two successive home wins after losing their two before.

It’ll no doubt be another tough game for Zola`s side but, if we are to take all three points for the first time under the Italian`s guidance, then I think that Kerim Frei will be key to it.

He made his full debut for Blues in the defeat at Norwich on Saturday and I’m expecting him to start again in what will be his first St Andrews appearance in a Blue shirt.

Frei is the sort of unpredictable player that Blues have lacked over the past year or so and it’s exciting for the fans that we have someone else that will hopefully get us off our seats every time he picks up the ball.

Reading are extremely well drilled at keeping hold of the ball so, even though Zola wants to play possession football, we may see less of the ball against the Royals.

This will mean that when we do have the ball, we need to make the most of it and Frei can be the man to make things happen for Blues and create opportunities.

We haven’t been taking our chances in recent weeks and something has got to change. We can’t just be relying on Lukas Jutkiewicz to get the goals for us so I think Frei is someone to do this.

His pace and trickery can cause all sorts of problems for the Reading defence, especially if they opt to play three centre halves and wing backs as they have done recently.

The space left by the wing back could give Frei the chance to go one on one with a Reading centre back and I think we would all be confident that our man would come out on top.

It’s crucial that we feed the ball to Frei as much as possible and make him a danger to Reading from the moment the referee blows that first whistle.

We need to get off to a quick start and there’s no better way of doing that by getting in the faces of our opponents and running at them with pace.

Frei needs to become our go-to play when we need something magical to happen. Hopefully tomorrow he can provide just that.