It’s a trip to St Andrew’s up next for Preston North End to take on Lee Bowyer’s Birmingham City in the Championship.
Match Information
Venue: St Andrew’s
Date: Saturday 25th September, 3pm kick-off
Competition: EFL Sky Bet Championship (Matchday 9/46)
Kit: Third kit – available to pre-order here!
Supporter Information
Over 1,000 PNE supporters are making the journey to Birmingham on Saturday afternoon and tickets remain on sale until 4.30pm on Friday.
Supporters can purchase from the ticket office and over the phone on 0344 856 1966 until that time, while online sales on mypne.com will stop at 1pm.
Fans who aren’t making the trip can listen live on iFollow PNE from the UK and Ireland, while supporters elsewhere can watch the game live. Subscribe here now.
PNE Team News
Both Connor Wickham and Liam Lindsay will be unavailable for the trip to the Midlands after picking up injuries in Tuesday night’s Carabao Cup tie against Cheltenham Town.
Wickham picked up a muscle injury which he will see a specialist for, while Lindsay’s is not as bad as first feared, according to Frankie McAvoy.
The head coach also confirmed pre-match that this game will come too soon for Ched Evans, Matthew Olosunde and Tom Barkhuizen, while Scott Sinclair, who has had a virus, is back in training.
The Opposition
Birmingham City, known as Blues to their supporters, head into the weekend’s game on the back of defeats to Fulham and Peterborough United.
Before that, though, they took seven points from a possible nine, with that run beginning with a fantastic 5-0 victory away to Luton Town.
Head coach Lee Bowyer has had a largely successful time in charge of them so far since his arrival from Charlton Athletic, where he enjoyed promotion from League One.
Key Stats
Birmingham’s main man in front of goal so far this season has been Scott Hogan, having scored three times in the league, while the rest of their goals have been spread out between seven different scorers.
PNE have enjoyed many of their recent meetings with Blues, with four of the last five games ending in victories.
Birmingham currently sit bottom of the Championship table for possession, averaging just 40.8 per cent of the ball in their games so far this season.
Our Last Meeting
North End came out on top of the last game between these two, with Scott Sinclair’s goal in the 61st minute making the difference.
Jayson Molumby, making one of his first appearances for the club after joining on loan from Brighton, picked the ball up just inside the opposition half before running to the edge of the box, feeding Sinclair to find the far corner.
Man In The Middle
Referee for Saturday’s game will be Matthew Donohue, who has taken charge of four Championship ties so far this season.
He is relatively new to the EFL pyramid, having refereed his first game in the top four tiers in August 2018, while his maiden Championship match came a year later.
This will be his fourth time as the main official of a PNE game, with the last being the 2-0 home victory over Barnsley in the final stages of the 2020/21 season.
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