Championship: Birmingham City- Middlesbrough

We got the desired result at the Emirates, with Boro, who are our main outright bet in the Championship losing and now only having promotion and we hope the title race, to concern them, ahead of their last league away game, at struggling Blackpool last midweek I wrote ......

With Bournemouth and Derby County meeting on the South Coast (see below) , Boro will move into the top 2 with a win of any kind this evening. There is no point in Blackpool sitting back, they are effectively ten points from safety and only a win is going to help their cause, but in truth it is a lost one anyway and they are going to be playing league 1 football next season. They are also coming off what is a terrible, six hour (if you are lucky) cross country trip to Norwich City at the weekend where they lost 4-0 and the match was over as a contest inside 25 minutes. They are better at home and all four wins have come here, but not against the top teams , they are 0-1-8 against the top 7, conceding an averaged of 3.0 per game, their recent overall form has picked up, but again, not against the better teams, infact, it has got worse and they have conceded a whopping 19 goals in their last four starts against top 7 sides.  Boro will arrive very focused on the three points and surely with a little revenge on their mind as the only point that the Seasiders have earned against those top 7 was in a 1-1 early season draw in the reverse fixture. After that game, boss Aitor Karanka told the BBC "I said yesterday that if we want to do something this season, these are the kinds of games where we cannot lose points." Imagine if they come up a point or two short in the hunt for an automatic promotion spot and have dropped four against the basement club, who have lost to everyone else ! They just cannot allow that to happen and the whole squad were very one dimensional in their approach when talking to the local newspaper yesterday, striker Jelle Vossen reflected that and said:“We are looking for revenge because we didn’t win the home game.” We dominated but did not get all three points and we must put that right this time, that is the big motivation for us."

They won that 3-1, again doing the home damage late and what I like is that there has been no mention of the Arsenal game at all from anyone connected with the team, that is the icing on this week's cake and it is only going to taste sweet and be savoured, if they get the job done this evening. On the road, they have tended to get the damage done early , with 65% of away goals coming before the break, the opposite of how home games have played out, but it might take a little time to get ahead this evening. Pool have scored just two first half home goals all season , but have not conceded many early and despite losing here to all the other top 7 teams, they did not concede inside 25 minutes in any and the playing surface is poor here and it might take Boro a little time to adapt.
 

There is a lot of good stuff in those notes, that is one preview out of what will probably be 2,500 in 2015, for which many of you will pay maybe 0.25€ each for, I do not want to waste my time preaching today ( I will save that for later), but you either get it or you don't, if you don't and can better value for your 25 cents, then you have done very well.

 

Boro won that 2-1 with all the action coming late. I spoke about the "easy" schedule for them over the next few weeks, the truth is they really need to take advantage of that as the fixture list looks tough from the middle of next month, when they play the other four top five clubs inside five starts, three on the road, in other words, Boro need to take advantage of the schedule now. Karanka is a very bright guy and will be well aware of that and his team and squad have played all season, with February-May in mind.
 

City have improved greatly under Gary Rowett, but off the pitch, old problems have resurfaced and the parent company which own the club have gone into receivership. They can say what they want, that it will "not have any effect on the players and will actually be good for the team long term", but in reality, that is not how things tend to play out and we have seen at Brentford over the last 7-8 days how much things outside their control, can influence the on field performance of players. Footballers have a lot of spare time on their hands and gossip wise are like old women ( no disrespect to old women !) and it will have been the main topic of conversation on the training ground this week. On a more positive note, they did sign Rob Kiernan on loan from Wigan and he will go straight into the squad, he was with Rowett on loan at Burton Albion in L2 and is decent enough at lower level, but would never come close to even being considered at any of the top 8 in the Championship, let alone signed, which I only mention to indicate how tight the purse strings are at City. Boro can freshen up the squad with defender Tomas Kalas and midfielder Adam Forshaw after the pair were ineligible for the tie with the Gunners and I take them to win this. A point is enough to go top, a win will give them a two point lead, which would mean they could go five clear if they follow up with a lunchtime win over Leeds United on Saturday and with four of the top seven meeting later in the day, this could be key and this a pivotal week for Boro.
 

1.25 units Middlesbrough -0.75 ball 2.44 asian line/Sportmarket.