Recent Results, history:

1st place Arsenal take on 16th place Birmingham on Saturday. Since the Blues promotion to the Premier League in the 2002/03 season, Arsenal have won 6 meetings, drawing and losing one game each in their 8 matches. In Arsenal’s wins, they have outscored Birmingham 15-0. The only goals that the Blues have scored against Arsenal came in their 2-1 home win (courtesy of a last minute marker by Heskey) in the 2004/05 season. Arsenal can be forgiven for their 0-0 tie at Highbury against the Blues as the game came after the Gunner’s had clinched the title in that memorable unbeaten season.

In the all time league stats, Arsenal have won 54, drawn 30 and lost 34 times to Birmingham. The first time these two teams played each other was in the F.A Cup all the way back on Jan 16, 1892 when the Blues thrashed Arsenal 5-1. Their first league games took place in the 1893/94 season when the Gunners lost both fixtures by a 4-1 margin. The Blues had a good run in the late 50′s and early 60′s when they became the first English team to take part in an European competition (Fair’s Cup in 1956), were F.A Cup Runners also in 1956, Fairs Cup runners up in 1960 & 1961 and won the League Cup in 1963.

Current Season:

Arsenal (50 points) are 31 points ahead of Birmingham (19). The Gunner’s home record is still impressive with 10 league wins and one draw, scoring 25 goals along the way and letting in just 7. Arsenal are joint top scorers in the league with 42 goals whereas the Blues’ 22 goals puts them ahead of Derby (10 goals), Boro (18), Sunderland (20), Wigan (21) as the teams with the lowest goals tally. Incidentally, Fulham, Arsenal’s next opponents (Jan 19) also have only 22 goals to their name.

Out of the Blues’ 19 points this season, 12 came at home. They only have 2 wins away from home, with one of them being that 3-2 victory over Spurs, courtesy of ex-Gunner, Larsson. Birmingham’s top scorers this season are Oliver Kapo and Jerome with 5 goals each.

Saturday — The Missing vs the Returning:

This Saturday’s game will be the first time this season Arsenal take to the field in a league game without Kolo Toure; Eboue and Song will also be away on African Cup duty. But after a week of Cup games, it will be a refreshing change to see a lot of first team regulars. One player who will be eager to pull on that Arsenal jersey again would be Adebayor. The 10 day lay-off must have felt a long time for him especially in a week when Arsenal’s other two strikers grabbed the headlines. Eduardo and Bendtner each got a goal and Edu set up two goals with his fine slide rule passes in the two cup games. Even the normally quiet Kolo was full of praise for Eduardo just before he took off for Ghana. So it will be interesting to see how fired up Ade would be. Also, Robin Van Persie got a 45 minute run against Spurs, so he should also be eager to regain his first team place.