EPL 19/1/2008 - Birmingham vs Chelsea

Much has been made of Chelsea's new transfer darling Anelka before tonight's live commentary and play by play English Premier League match between Birmingham and Chelsea. There has also been talk of midfield maestro Frank Lampard returning to the lineup at some point during tonight's game at Birmingham. However, what everyone has forgotten for the moment is that Chelsea still looks defensively weak relatively, without Terry, Lampard, and now guys like Essien. They do have new Serbian signing Branislav Ivanovic available tonight to play in defence but he is still an unknown quantity and we can't assume his international and other club form will automatically translate to that of the English Premier League (EPL). In fact, even with Drogba, Chelsea also defend from the front, so we do have quite a weakened Chelsea side visiting Birmingham and they have been scraping through their recent games, but admittedly they have been scraping through with results.

Birmingham might have their own ideas of an upset at home during this game which will have live commentary and match analysis and highlights on the odds for each team. Birmingham are playing at home, and they have just added Scotland international striker McFadden to the team after he agreed to move from Everton to join his ex-Scotland boss Alex McLeish. Now no doubt McFadden is an extremely hardworking and honest player, and has a certain EPL standard, but he is just that and after watching him a couple of times with Everton, he will be your typical hardworking striker who will score not more than 10-15 goals a season if he is given a consistent run out in the first team but whether that would be enough to help Birmingham stay in the EPL is another question. I still do not like teams like Birmingham who play spoilers by packing the midfield and defence and try to score that breakaway goal but under McLeish they have opened up a little so hopefully they change their past style previously under Steve Bruce and can stay up based on that. Then again their aim is to stay in the EPL so we cannot hope for too much.

So in this live commentary and play by play game between Birmingham vs Chelsea, it might be difficult to pick a winner. Everything points towards a draw as long as Birmingham maintain their concentration because Chelsea still struggle to find a rhythm although they have new weapons in Anelka and Branislav and might scrape through again. We will see what happens but I fancy a draw and possible Birmingham win. Probably very few goals and under the total.