fa cup replay

NEW VS BIR

Tonight see a battle of two astute managers, Roeder in Newcastle and Bruce in Birmingham. Frankly speaking, both have done not too badly as bosses considering how Bruce had to cope with injury nightmares last season when Birmingham was still in the top flight, and now it is Roeder's turn.

Newcastle are having a torrid time with injuries and have no less than 15 senior players out while having to draft in 5 youth players. It is no mean feat to cope with such a headache while still competing in the FA Cup, Uefa Cup and Epl.Thankfully they have live up to expectations(of some) so far and the team has to work doubly hard for their results.

With Owen, Parker, Emre, Babayaro, N'zogbia, Carr, just to name a few, still in the treatment room, it has expectedly been goals galore for Newcastle, both scoring while conceding. As expected, the inexperienced backline has not been able to cope much and let in quite a number of goals and as I can see, Roeder must have instructed them to throw everything forward while attacking in a bid to outscore their opponents.

This arises to nearly all of the last 8 matches ending in TG Over and as things stand, Roeder declared that he will start with the same lineup as the last winning 3-2 at Tottenham should give punters an idea of what's coming.

On the other hand, Birmingham are leading the pack in the Championship and looks to be going back to the top tier immidiately. Their strength is in scoring and winning the rest by a comfortable margin, thus their feat in topping the table. Going into this, they have Brendter, who is on loan from Arsenal, out injured and Jaidi suspended from his read card the last time round. However, they have an extra rest period due to the call off of the previous game against Leeds. Bruce has labelled his interest in winning any possible domestic competition and it is unlikely he will take priority over the Championship compared to this. Also, except for their last away game, the last few have registered TG Over and it is possible this is the result we are looking for tonight.

Verdict: TG Over