BirminghamWorld XI: Our Blues line-up for the trip to Huddersfield

Birmingham City’s quest to achieve their first point of October continues when they travel to the John Smith’s Stadium to take on Huddersfield Town on Wednesday night.

The Blues are without a win in their last six and have only managed to score one solitary goal across that same period.

With the winter months looming and injuries mounting, it’s not getting any easier for Lee Bowyer’s team.

The one positive, if you can find any, is that there have been some decent performances in this torrid run but the goals just haven’t been there.

Huddersfield provide yet another relatively strong opposition for Blues. They currently occupy one of the four Championship play-off spots and have kept clean-sheets in their last two.

It’s not must win territory for Birmingham, far from it. But I’d argue that the team needs to get something from this game, even if it’s just a bloody goal.

Here’s the line-up I’d go for.

Birmingham XI:

(3-4-3): Sarkic; Sanderson, Roberts, Friend; Bela, Pedersen, Gardner, Sunjic; Chong, Deeney, Hogan

They say if it’s not broke, don’t fix it. Ironically, having said that, many would say this formation in particular is very broken. There’s wires sticking out in parts you didn’t even know existed, in fact.

But the squad depth means it’s hard to pick any other formation. Maxime Colin hobbled off in the loss against West Brom and Lee Bowyer revealed in his pre-match press conference that he is set to see a specialist about an Achilles problem.

That now means the Blues are without a recognised right-back and Jeremie Bela looks to be the only logical option, playing there as a wing-back rather than a traditional full-back. So, the 3-4-3 looks to be staying around for a little longer at least.

Aside from that, defensively the team were pretty solid against West Brom so it would, for me, seem appropriate not to tweak much elsewhere.

The only other change I make is bringing Troy Deeney in for Lukas Jutkiewicz. That’s not because Jutkiewicz has done anything particularly wrong - neither he or Deeney have set the world alight with goals, I just think the latter is more likely to bring them.

Scott Hogan, again, didn’t score but his performance was pretty good for the most part and he is much more suited to playing on the right or left of Deeney than Juke would be.

Bench

Chuks Aneke, Harlee Dean, Ryan Woods, Jordan Graham, Lukas Jutkiewicz, Juan Familia-Castillo, Connal Trueman

No major movement on the bench. Jutkiewicz of course dropping in there in place of Deeney but the one main change would be a place for Juan Familia-Castillo.

The Chelsea loanee hasn’t been in the squad at all since he found himself on the bench in the 5-0 win over Luton Town back in August.

Other than that, he’s been playing his football in the PL2 with the under 23s. Colin’s injury, though, means he could find his way back into the first team sooner rather than later.

Score prediction

Huddersfield Town 1-2 Birmingham City

Maybe I’m just stupidly optimistic but a win is coming. I can feel it.

A win and two goals might be pushing it a little. It will feel like every Blues fans Christmas’s have come at once.

‘Due a win’ is an understatement from a Birmingham perspective and maybe, just maybe, it will come on Wednesday evening.