Team News

Blues lost Stuart Parnaby and Lee Carsley in the cup game last week but as neither were first teamers in the league I would expect the team to be the same as for our previous few league games.

Man United will be without Nemanja Vidic so will have a centre back pairing of Wes Brown and Jonny Evans.

Previous Meeting

This season’s reverse fixture took place on opening day where Man Utd won 1-0 with a goal from Wayne Rooney.  The last game at St Andrews took place in September 2007 and also finished 1-0 to United.  The first half of this game was one of the best Blues’ performances I have ever seen and only great goalkeeping by Edwin Van Der Sar and then Tomasz Kuszczak kept us out.  United’s goal came very much against the run of play and was as a result of a mistake by Franck Quedrue that let Cristiano Ronaldo in.  That night we learnt just how unforgiving the Premiership can be.

Recent Form

Blues are now second in the form league and are unbeaten in twelve games.  We have not lost at St Andrews since September.  Man United have won their last two in the league but are coming off the back of an embarrassing home defeat to League One Leeds United in the FA Cup.

Outlook

At the time of writing this is one of only two Premiership games today to survive the big freeze.  The club are very confident it will go ahead and this is due to the great work put in by the club staff and a small army of volunteers who helped clear the surrounding area.  It’s still going to be very cold (Minus 3 Celsius) so if you’re going wrap up warm and take care getting to the ground.  For once I won’t mind having to squeeze in between a couple of fat blokes as at least it will keep me warm.

Usually writing a preview for a game against Man United would be about hoping to avoid a hammering but there are more reasons for optimism at the moment.  By their own standards their form of late has not been great and last week’s cup defeat was probably their worst performance of the season.  Our form on the other hand is the best it’s ever been in the Premier league and if we can hold off Chelsea then surely we have to fancy our chances of getting at least a point at United.  On the negative side we can expect a reaction to the cup defeat and also Alex Mcleish has just been given the manager of the month award which often leads to defeat in the following game.

The key will be to attack their newly formed defensive pair of Brown and Evans who will not have played together that often.  Set pieces will also be crucial both attacking and defending.  Of course we need to continue to keep it tight at the back as I can imagine Wayne Rooney is going to be fired up for this one.  One area of concern is their right hand side where I can see Valencia getting some joy against Ridgewell as I don’t expect he well get a lot of defensive help from McFadden.  I think a draw will be a good result and most Bluenoses will go home happy with that.

As I’m always wrong I’m going to predict 2-0 to United.