We’re making a massive call here on Birmingham City’s season
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Burton Albion and Queens Park Rangers are as good as safe and can begin preparing for another season in the Championship. Rotherham United have already been relegated and Wigan Athletic look set to join them in League One.
That leaves one spot in the drop zone, with three teams battling to avoid it.
Birmingham City have the advantage given that they have a game in hand over their relegation-threatened opponents – but that game is against bitter rivals Aston Villa this afternoon.
Without a shadow of a doubt, this is their biggest game of the season, possibly of their recent history.
Win it and they’ll be five points clear of the bottom three with two games to go. Pretty safe.
However, lose it, and we think they’ll go down.
Granted, they’ll still be safe in the table, regardless of today’s result – but if we’re talking about momentum, a defeat for Blues today would be a nightmare scenario.
It would extend their winless run in the Championship to 10 games. It would mean they will have picked up a meagre four points from a possible 30 since the start of March.
But their rivals at the bottom are doing everything they can to scrape enough points together to avoid the drop.
Blackburn Rovers, currently 22nd in the table, have picked up five points from their last three games to give themselves a chance of staying up. Their two remaining fixtures come against sides sitting in the middle of the table with nothing to play for. We wouldn’t be surprised to see Rovers add another four points to their tally between now and the end of the season.
That would make things interesting.
Meanwhile, Nottingham Forest picked up a vital three points against an in-form Reading side on Saturday. That puts them some three points clear of relegation as things stand, with games against QPR and Ipswich Town still to come. You’d expect them to get something from either of those matches and maintain their Championship status.
Birmingham will welcome high-fliers Huddersfield Town to St Andrew’s and travel to Bristol City between now and the end of the season.
On current form alone, we just can’t see them picking up anything from those two games.
Of course, a win against Villa today would change things. But Steve Bruce’s men know that victory over their neighbours could play a huge part in Blues going down.
The hosts are 21/20 favourites to take all three points from this game at Villa Park, and taking everything into consideration we think those are great odds.
But even better than that could be the 11/4 currently available for Birmingham City to go down.
All Odds and Markets are correct as of the date of publishing
