Wolves 1 - 0 Birmingham City

Typical of Mick McCarthy. Just as he has his back to the wall once again, he delivers the goods, and how.


Our line-up almost consisted of our bare bones with four youth players on the bench and Kevin Doyle, Michael Mancienne, Steven Mouyokolo and Matt Jarvis absent. We started off the better team from start to finish with a flurry of chances started with Dave Edwards and Stephen Hunt forcing saves out of Ben Foster. Within our first half dominance Birmingham had a decent share of possession without offering any attacking threat or potency. Nicola Zigic waswinning headers to nowhere. On the half-hour mark, lone striker Sylvan Ebanks-Blake started to stomp his authority on the game with two shots on target - one on the turn just outside the box and another from a tight angle - which were dealt with by Foster. And on the stroe of half-time, he got the beating of Scott Dann and crossed from the right wing for Hunt to tap in at the near post to score at a perfect time.


Straight after the interval, Ward again put in another cross and Edwards' feint header was just wide. Hunt was everywhere today, whether he was terrorising defenders or tracking back to retain possession, and he almost contributed towards another goal when his corner found the head of Nenad Milijas, who was again denied by Foster. Birmingham stepped from first gear and brought on Craig Gardner and Jean Beausejour. Cometh the hour, cometh resident bogeyman Kevin Phillips for the last 15 minutes but he summed up the visitors' afternoon when he headed so wide Wayne Hennessey didn't have to move.


This was a much needed win to boost morale ahead of next weeks trip to Sandwell and a chance to get us out of the bottom three.

'Grobs'

Wolves v Birmingham City

Today sees us take on the least successful of our Premiership local rivals in the shape of Birmingham City and we could do with a change of fortune against them with no league win since 2001.

We will be likely to welcome back David Edwards to the fold after recovering from a thigh injury to bolster the sparse numbers in the midfield, hopefully he will step in for Stephen Ward, who gave it a go in the role last week against Blackburn.

The Bluenoses will have a no major injury problems as they will play with the same backline that served them well as of late as well as last season. We hope that Kevin Phillips doesn't make it anywhere near the bench with his uncanny habit of scoring in local derbies and against us ast St Andrews last season. Or that torch is passed on to giant Serbian striker Nicola Zigic, who scored the winner in the Carling Cup against Aston Villa. Wayne Hennessey needs to be on his toes today getting these high balls.

Form and pretty football is irrelevent today, let's get a win, boys!

'Grobs'