BRUM IS BLUE!

Blues are in action tonight in the Carabao Cup as we face Sheffield United at St Andrews @ Knighthead Park. An all Championship affair, a chance for a day out at Wembley on the 22nd March.

Sheffield United played Bristol City at the weekend suffering the heaviest defeat of the Championship as Bristol ran away 4-1 winners, you do sometimes get these results in the early days and it could be Sheffield finding their feet so it’s not always a true measure of what we can expect tonight. It will also no doubt be a slightly weaker starting 11 from Sheffield (And Blues to be fair) but manager Ruben Selles will still want a response from his team, perhaps with an eye on a few fringe players coming through.

Last season Blues made it through the first round but found themselves knocked out of the second round by Fulham. I asked the question yesterday about a cup run and it’s the first time in years I’ve thought getting knocked out of the competition won’t be the worst of things, the League looks more than likely so do we want to risk this?

Blues will of course potentially start with a weakened line up but even our weakened line up is likely to be very strong. For Blues it will also give fringe players a look in, although Friday’s starting line up looked pretty settled. Davies will want to continue to engrain the winning mentality through every player in the squad though so he won’t want the players just wandering around waiting for the game to finish, but will expect 100% still.

I’d love to see a bit of symmetry and have Blues win the cup and go up, it would be almost poetic having won it and got relegated but I appreciate that is unlikely. Personally I see us winning tonight as a minimum and we know Davies takes it one game at a time. One thing we will be hoping, no matter the result, is to see a better standard of officiating, especially after that debacle on Friday.

Head to Head

Head to head then the two teams have met a total of 114 times with Blues edging Sheffield 47 to 44 wins, the remaining 23 fixtures have finished as a draw. In recent times though, the last five for instance, Blues have managed just one victory, suffering two defeats and two draws.

The last time the two teams met in the League Cup Blues came away victorious winning 4-2 away from home. In fact, and correct me if I’m wrong, it looks as though Blues haven’t suffered defeat in any cup competition to Sheffield in 8 attempts. This should give us even more confidence coupled with their result at the weekend.

Match Officials

Gavin Ward is the man in the middle of this one and to be honest that doesn’t fill me with confidence still as far too often he seems to crop up in the media having made poor decisions. It’s his first match in charge this season, the last time he was in the middle was between Gillingham and AFC Wimbledon when he dished out five yellow cards.

His assistants will be Hugh Gilroy and Emily Carney (Any relation to Karen?) with Dean Whitestone as the fourth official.

I’m not going to suggest it will be a walk in the park, especially as I’m not convinced Beadle is any better than Peacock-Farrell, but I think Blues should non-the-less have enough to progress to the next round. I’m going 3-1 Blues.