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· Last Season's Corresponding Game - Spurs 2 Birmingham 1
· This Season's Away Game - Birmingham 1 Spurs 1
· This week - last year
· What happened in the Premiership in Match 38 2009-10
· See the current injury list for all Premiership Teams
· All the Spurs Stats you could hope for here! THFC6061 Sports Stats
Full League Record of Spurs -v- Birmingham City
Premier Pl W D L For-Ag Pts
Home 6 5 0 1 13 - 6 15
Away 7 1 4 2 7 - 9 7
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Total (Prem) 13 6 4 3 20 -14 22
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Football Lge
Home (Div 1) 28 20 4 4 63 -22 47
Away (Div 1) 28 10 4 14 31 -39 25
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Total (Div 1) 56 30 8 18 94 -61 72
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Football Lge
Home (Div 2) 4 1 1 2 6 - 4 3
Away (Div 2) 4 1 2 1 4 - 4 4
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Total(Div 2) 8 2 3 3 10 - 8 7
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Total (Prem) 13 6 4 3 20 -14 22
Total(Div 1) 56 30 8 18 94 -61 72
Total(Div 2) 8 2 3 3 10 - 8 7
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Grand Total 77 38 15 24 124 -84 101
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Last Six Premiership results:-
Spurs
Spurs 3-3 Arsenal
Spurs 2-2 West Brom
Chelsea 2-1 Spurs
Spurs 1-1 Blackpool
Man City 1-0 Spurs
Liverpool 0-2 Spurs
Birmingham
B'mingham 2-0 S'derland
Chelsea 3-1 B'mingham
Liverpool 5-0 B'mingham
B'mingham 1-1 Wolves
Newcastle 2-1 B'mingham
B'mingham 0-2 Fulham
Pos P W D L F-A GD Pts
5 Spurs 37 15 14 8 53-45 8 59
17 B'mingham 37 8 15 14 36-56 -20 39
Spurs must be ruthless
They're calling it "Survival Sunday" (well, Sky are), and Spurs are involved, with our game against Birmingham City being shown live on Sky Sports, along with Manchester United v Blackpool, and Stoke v Wigan (on the red button). Wolves v Blackburn (apparently overlooked for television coverage) completes the line-up of the five teams at risk of relegation, with two of them destined to join West Ham in next year's Championship. Thankfully, Spurs are only involved because of their visitors, although we do need to match the Liverpool result to hold onto fifth place and the automatic Europa League qualification.
Birmingham go into this game above Blackpool and Wigan only on goal difference. It's a day when even the margin of defeat by all three teams could be the deciding factor. Spurs have their own agenda, and simply have to be ruthless in putting Birmingham away. Our season started 9 months ago at home against Manchester City in hope and with the recognition that qualification for another year of Champions League football would be difficult. Our hope was carried almost to the end of the season, and it was only at Eastlands on 10th May that our recognition of the difficulty became the knowledge of impossibility.
Last week, it looked on the cards that we would not even hold onto fifth place, but a glorious and rare victory at Anfield has re-ignited our optimism that Spurs can get the result they need on Sunday, even if we are now only looking at the Europa League. However, that mood has to be balanced by the fact that over the course of this season, Spurs dropped no less than 19 points against the teams that either have been or could be relegated this week. That remains an unacceptable statistic. The league table does not lie. Two of those lost points came at Birmingham, where we drew 1-1 in December. Sebastien Bassong scored only his second ever goal for Spurs, but the Brummies got a late equaliser.
Birmingham have suffered the same syndrome as we did three years ago after winning the Carling Cup. After we beat Chelsea in February 2008, Juande Ramos's Spurs managed just 3 wins in their remaining 12 league games. Our first opponents were Birmingham, who soundly beat us 4-1 at St. Andrews within a week of our great win. Birmingham were relegated at the end of that season. We finished 11th.
This year, since beating Arsenal (and hearty congratulations for that by the way) and winning their path to Europa League football, Birmingham have won only 2 of their 12 league games, at home to Bolton and Sunderland. They find themselves in the midst of the relegation mire, because they have spent most of their season in that area of the league table, and crucially they have lost four of their last five games. Of those last five games, the home draw against Wolves could prove to be the most decisive result.
Statistics do not favour Alex McLeish's side. Birmingham have won only once at White Hart Lane in their previous six Premier League visits. That was in December 2007, when McLeish had only just been appointed, and his team gave Ramos his first taste of defeat as Spurs boss. Perhaps statistics DO favour Mcleish, after all!
Birmingham goalkeeper Ben Foster has been in the news for the right and wrong reasons recently. Having been voted City's Player of the Year, he was the highest profile player to be out until 4 a.m after earlier in this week, after another one of those end of season parties. A week or two before that, he (perhaps prematurely) decided to call a halt on his potential future England appearances, by choosing to retire from International football.
Foster was signed permanently from Manchester United last summer, but as a United loan player to Watford was embarrassed to concede Spurs goal-keeper Paul Robinson's historic goal in March 2007. Foster almost repeated such a trick last week against Fulham, when he was nearly caught out by Mark Schwarzer's long clearance. Foster just managed to get a touch, but conceded a corner from which Fulham scored one of their two goals. Foster will no doubt prefer to remember his man of the match performance against Spurs in the 2009 Carling cup Final, when United won on penalties.
Spurs are only a little higher up the Premier League "Injury List Table" than Birmingham. However, they will hopefully be able to field the same team that won so well at Anfield last week. It would be great to see the majestic Ledley King at The Lane for the last game of the season. Birmingham will not be able to field Spurs' loanee David Bentley, who has also managed to get the wrong headlines for recently leaving the ground, when not selected for a game. They will have Ridgewell and Gardner available, who were suspended last week. Craig Gardner scored the "Blues" equaliser in our December draw at St. Andrews. Not all Birmingham fans like him, but a player they do seem to be missing is 30 year old lanky Serbian striker Nikola Zigic, who rarely plays 90 minutes, but often has a great deal of nuisance value. McLeish may once again have to rely upon the services of veteran striker Kevin Phillips, whose league career started 17 years ago at Watford, since when he has scored a grand total of 221 league goals for 6 clubs. Phillips has called this game the "£90 million game". The figure is the perceived reward for promoted clubs and the possible loss for those relegated.
The last time Spurs hosted a team at risk of relegation on the last day of the season was on May 11th, 1997, when Gordon Strachan's Coventry City came to town needing a win to stand any chance of survival. Sunderland lost away to Wimbledon and Middlesbrough could only draw at Leeds, so with a 2-1 win the miraculous escape was performed by Coventry. Dion Dublin put them in the lead, and Paul Williams gave the "Sky Blues" a two goal lead in the 39th minute. Paul McVeigh reduced the deficit just before half-time. It was only the second start for McVeigh and his only senior goal for the club. Jamie Clapham made his Spurs debut, and has just been relegated from the Football League with Lincoln. Middlesbrough were losing finalists in both the League and FA Cups.
I'm going to take Spurs to win this one 3-0. Will that mean relegation for Birmingham? we'll find out around 5.50 p.m. on Sunday!
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