Championship: Birmingham City- Sunderland
I spoke about City in the Villa preview, they spent a king's ransom in the off season, with the owners allowing Harry Redknapp to sign everything with a pulse and then sacking him 4-5 games into the new campaign and replacing him with another coach past his sell by date in Steve Cotterill. OMG, how to make a small fortune ? Start with a large one and make clueless decisions about how to run a football club !
In December I wrote .............
I am no fan of Harry Redknapp, but he bought these players to at least play a certain way and would have had City entertaining supporters, replacement Steve Cotterill is another dinosaur, but a defensive and clueless one and I spoke often about him being out of his depth at this level whilst with Bristol City and typical comments were.........
City were back down to earth with a 2-1 home loss to Burnley and the match at Boro aside, City have struggled to put together more than 30 minutes in any one game and are finding the transition to Championship life tough and boss Steve Cotterill is hardly a calming influence on the sidelines in that respect, if it came down to him versus (Gary) Rowett, mano e mano it is a mismatch in coaching ability.
He has no idea how to get the best out of someone like Jota, who is now a "waste of money", after he scored 12 goals and had five assists in basically 19 appearances for the Bees in the second half of last season, even a good manager cannot force square pegs into round holes. They have no balance in the team, spent a fortune in the summer and I am not sure if there is money left to correct it in January, when anyone decent always costs more and is Cotterill the man to trust with this anyway ? He has a 29.74% win rate in the Championship from 279 games and has always been in charge of teams with "money", he has won 6/35 in the last five seasons, through which the second tier has changed greatly and moved on and his record wasn't great before that. He must interview well or have a good agent !
City are still bottom three , they are 2-2-4 since I wrote those notes and goals are still very hard to come by, but they meet another big club today and one in a very similar situation, with Sunderland just a point and place better off. I spoke about the Black Cats earlier in the campaign having far more about them offensively than a typical Championship struggler and they have scored more goals than 13th placed Norwich City, their issues are at the other end of the pitch and they have continued on their free and easy ways in front of their own goal under Chris Coleman, especially on the road, where they have shipped a divisional high 26 goals.
Two struggling teams usually means goals, that goes double after Christmas and these two do not look bottom 3 by accident, both will surely look for the win today and I doubt either will keep a clean sheet for long. Goal line is priced based on tight/defensive nature of the host, but that tends to go out of the window in these h2h match ups and we have to look to take advantage.
1.75 units "over" 2.25 goals 2.21 asian line/Sportmarket.
Good Luck.
