They should be giving tickets away for this one. Fulham have £20 million worth of international strikers on the sick list and are winless from the last four. Birmingham yet to win away...

For the neutrals and with London temperatures hovering just above freezing an afternoon in front of the telly looks rather more compelling than this dog fight at the Cottage. In fact, root canal treatment without the novocaine might be considered more fun than suffering the Whites recent inability to provide anything like creativity in the final third of the pitch.

But hey, this is football in winter, and fans from both under pressure sides would happily march down Fulham Palace Road topless to guarantee three points. On paper Birmingham will surely feel this is their big opportunity to garner their first road win of the season, especially after downing Chelsea last week. Despite enjoying all the luck going, Ben Foster played heroically, and Brum hung on for a famous win. While Fulham's endeavours last weekend against Citeh are best forgotten. Chris Baird was brave enough to go into print this week and say it was the Whites worst performance in three seasons since he arrived at the club. Hear hear!

I've already posted how I felt Hughes sought to deflect criticism of his own team and tactics by praising his former club to the hilt as potential title winners. Let's be frank, we made it easy for them. Play like that every week and Barnet could turn us over. Should Hughes not select Gera from the start this afternoon he's going to start alienating a lot of supporters. The preference for Kelly - or anyone - over Pantsil also continues to cause much head-shaking.

News of a hamstring strain for AJ however may be a blessing in disguise. We are really down to the bare bones in attack, thus paving the way for Zoltan to start, supported by Clint and maybe Kamara. Please don't think EJ is good enough to play at this level, if anything give one of the youngsters a chance or a place on the bench? The fundamental issue however remains in the engine room of the team. Not wishing to labour the point, but as everybody who witnessed the Man City debacle realises, our current midfield needs to be rebuilt from scratch.

So there you have it. City too are missing their top scorer through injury - they do of course have the towering Zigic up front to lump the ball up to as a target man - but currently they don't appear to be playing with quite the vigour of last season. McLeish however will have them primed for this six pointer, they will certainly be more muscular than us, and in our current fragile state, may look to batter us. The first goal will be crucial. I can see us quickly deflating if we go a goal down.

Two sides in the bottom six seeing this as a game they must get something from suggests to me another in our series of drawn games. We are just going to have to limp into January and the transfer window. Only when Mark drafts in his new signings and we see BZ back up top can we begin to assess his credentials for management of Fulham FC.

It's backs to the wall time for Fulham fans...defeat today will really send a chill down the spine.

COYW
Twitter/fulhamphil