Town Return to Scene of McCarthy's First Game as Birmingham Battle for Championship Survival Thursday, 29th Mar 2018 18:51 Town visit Birmingham City, scene of Mick McCarthy’s first game in charge of the Blues back in November 2012, on Saturday with the Midlanders the ones desperate for points in a relegation battle on this occasion. Five-and-a-half years ago, two days after McCarthy’s November 1st appointment, the Blues travelled to St Andrew’s bottom of the Championship on only seven points from 13 games. The McCarthy era, which will come to a close when the currently 12th-placed Blues host Middlesbrough on the final day with a mid-table finish certain whatever happens in their final eight games, got off to a winning start with DJ Campbell netting the only goal after eight minutes as Town took the first step towards survival. Birmingham go into Saturday’s game 22nd, but in the bottom three by just a point following Good Friday's games, having ended a run of seven successive defeats by beating Hull City 3-0 at home in their final game before the international break. “We’re going back to the scene of the first crime,” McCarthy reflected. “Birmingham, where I had my first game. The irony is that I’m announcing that I’m finishing going back to Birmingham.
“We’ve got some winnable games but they’re scrapping for their lives, they had a great result last time out. “Then Millwall are coming here, that’ll be a great game on Easter Monday because I would think they’ll bring a lot of fans, they’ve been flying. So, we’ve got some good games and ones we’ve got to compete in.” With the press conference concentrating almost wholly on McCarthy’s summer departure, there was no team or injury news, however, winger Mustapha Carayol was expected to be back in contention after his groin problem in time for the game. McCarthy probably won’t stray too far from the team which was narrowly beaten 1-0 at Bristol City a fortnight ago, their first defeat in six away games. Bartosz Bialkowski, fresh from winning his first Poland cap, will be in goal with Cameron Carter-Vickers, who made his first start for the US as he won his second cap, in a back three alongside skipper Luke Chambers and Adam Webster.
Jonas Knudsen, who won his third Denmark cap and his first while with the Blues on Tuesday, will be the left wing-back, while Jordan Spence will probably be on the right. In midfield, Cole Skuse is likely to play behind Callum Connolly and Grant Ward, while Luke Hyam and former Birmingham man Stephen Gleeson are other options. Up front, Martyn Waghorn will be joined by Carayol or Bersant Celina in deeper roles or Freddie Sears alongside him. Youngsters Ben Morris - a sub in the last two first-team games - and Aaron Drinan - who is yet to make his Blues debut - will hope to play a part from the bench. Town are without midfielders Emyr Huws, Andre Dozzell (both knee) and Teddy Bishop (hamstring), who have been ruled out for the season along with keeper Dean Gerken (hip) and strikers David McGoldrick (groin) and Joe Garner (head, shoulder and knee). Right-back Dominic Iorfa was unavailable prior to the break with a groin problem, while midfielder Tom Adeyemi remains sidelined with his hamstring injury.
Birmingham boss Garry Monk, who took charge on 4th March following Steve Cotterill's departure, says he’d happily take a scruffy victory as his side look to escape the drop. "I'd take a rubbish 1-0 all day long," he told the Midlanders’ official site. "My idea is to play aggressively on the front foot. You want to see your team create chances and score goals. Who wouldn't want to watch that? But I also like the defensive side of it. """We scored three goals and created a number of other chances against Hull, but not every game is going to be like that. """If we need to grind out a win we need to do be able to do that, if we're going to score two or three goals we need to know how to do that, and then there's the type of game in between where it's a little bit tighter. " "We're trying to prepare them for each and every way to make sure we can compete and if we can score goals it's the number one thing because it wins you games. " "We know the capabilities of the whole squad, and it's up to us to push them and give them a platform to try and deliver as they did against Hull.” Regarding McCarthy's impending Blues exit, Monk told the Birmingham Mail: "I don’t know the ins and outs but there’s obviously been speculation of it for a while. "They’ve made the announcement now. Mick’s a really good, experienced manager and every time I’ve come up against his teams and spoken to him, you can see that experience and how good a manager he is. "At this moment in time it’s not our business, our business is ourselves. We’ll have to focus on ourselves and I’m sure I’ll speak to Mick after the game. "They’ve made that decision, rightly or wrongly - that’s between Mick and the club. "My focus at this moment is only on my team and the players and on this game on Saturday." Birmingham should have left-back Jonathan Grounds available again after a knee injury and midfielders Craig Gardner (hamstring) and David Davis (knee) could also be involved, but on-loan Southampton striker Sam Gallagher (calf) is not expected to be fit. Historically, Town have had the better record in fixtures between the sides, winning 35 times (32 in the league), drawing 16 (16) and losing 29 (23). At Portman Road on the opening day striker Garner got his Town career off to a goalscoring start by scoring a second-half debut goal to see the Blues to a 1-0 victory over the Midlanders. Garner turned in a Knudsen cross five minutes after the break to win the game, however, the victory was marred by what appears to be a serious knee ligament injury sustained by Dozzell just before the break. Last time at St Andrew’s in December 2016, Webster’s first goal for Town wasn’t enough to prevent the Blues from falling to a 2-1 defeat. Clayton Donaldson put the home side in front from the penalty spot in the 41st minute, Michael Morrison made it 2-0 eight minutes after the break before Webster headed his goal as the Blues attempted to stage a comeback in which Christophe Berra had what would have been a late equaliser harshly ruled out. Blues midfielder Huws had a spell on loan with Birmingham while a Manchester City player during the second half of 2013/14 making 17 starts and scoring two goals. Adeyemi spent the whole of the same season with the Midlanders making 36 starts and four sub appearances, netting three times. Gleeson joined Birmingham in the summer of 2014 from the MK Dons and went on to make 111 starts and 14 sub appearances, scoring one goal, before joining the Blues on a free transfer in January. Ex-Blues loanee David Stockdale made 18 appearances for Town between July and December 2011, while defender Morrison hails from Haverhill. Saturday's referee is Roger East from Wiltshire, who has shown 77 yellow cards and three red in 23 games so far this season. East's last Town match was the 1-1 draw at Brighton in February 2017 in which he booked eight players, five of them - Josh Emmanuel, Myles Kenlock, Emyr Huws, David McGoldrick and Tom Lawrence - from Town. Prior to that East refereed the 5-1 defeat at Reading in September 2015 in which he yellow-carded Knudsen, Chambers, Skuse, Ryan Fraser and no home players. He also took control of the play-off semi-final second leg against Norwich at Carrow Road in May 2015 in which Christophe Berra was red-carded and Skuse and one Canary were both booked. Before that, he was in charge of the 2-2 draw at Birmingham in August 2014 in which he cautioned only one home player. Squad from: Bialkowski, M Crowe, Spence, Kenlock, Chambers (c), Knudsen, Carter-Vickers, Webster, Skuse, Connolly, Hyam, Bru, Gleeson, Nydam, Ward, Celina, Carayol, Waghorn, Sears, Morris, Drinan.
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