Gameweek 29 is brought to a close with Everton and Birmingham slugging out their second fixtures of the week at Goodison. Down at the Lane meanwhile, Spurs host AC Milan in their Champions League second leg with a 1-0 advantage from the San Siro. Eyes and ears might well be drawn to North London tonight then, but the minds of Fantasy Managers will surely also be turning to events on Merseyside as David Moyes’ side look to build on the 2-1 win at St James’ Park at the weekend.
Our Dugout Discussion chatroom is open for those wishing to indulge in some real-time opinion slinging on tonight’s events.
We had an anxious wait on Nikola Zigic’s groin – I never really thought I’d ever by typing that for all kinds of reasons. The news is that the “Serbian Skyscraper” misses out – he’s got to tuck his legs up on the Birmingham bench once more. Presumably Zigic is fit enough to play some part, but Alex McLeish appears to have opted for a 4-5-1 with his starting lineup. He makes three changes – Seb Larsson is brought back into the midfield, along with Jordon Mutch – Keith Fahey and Obafemi Martins drop out. Martin Jiránek comes in for Curtis Davies at the back.
As for the home side, they bring in Johnny Heitinga for hamstring victim Phil Neville and presumably the Dutchman will sit in the Everton midfield holding role. Seamus Coleman is on the bench again then. In better news for Fantasy Managers, Rafael Van der Vaart starts for Spurs tonight.
Here’s the full lineups from Goodison:
Everton XI: Howard; Hibbert, Jagielka, Distin, Baines; Osman, Heitinga, Rodwell, Arteta; Beckford, Saha.
Birmingham XI: Foster; Carr, Johnson, Jiranek, Ridgewell; Larsson, Bowyer, Mutch, Bentley, Beausejour; Jerome.
