Birmingham City’s stubborn revival under caretaker-manager, Pep Clotet, continued on Saturday when The Blues extended their unbeaten run to 4 matches with a valuable 3-2 win away from home at the Madejski Stadium against Reading.
Previous 1-1 draws with Huddersfield Town, Sheffield Wednesday and Millwall have also helped Birmingham up into 13th place on the Championship table and although Wednesday night’s hosts sit in a mid-table position, they’re still only 4 points adrift of 6th placed Sheffield Wednesday and the play-off pack.
Plenty of incentive then for The Blues to go on the front foot at St Andrews, especially as their visitors, QPR, have managed to record only 1 away win out of their last 5 matches on their travels.
Birmingham have lost just 1 of their last 5 matches on home turf as well, so with the likes of forwards Jutkiewicz (5 goals) and Gimenez (3 goals) supported by Maghoma, Bela and Bellingham, the hosts will be confident that they can hit the back of the net here.
5 of Birmingham’s 9 home matches have also resulted in both teams scoring.
QPR also head into this midweek clash in the west midlands on the back of a win on the weekend when they registered a solid 2-0 victory at home against Preston North End which ended a miserable run of 7 matches without a win in the Championship.
This poor sequence of results prior to the win on Saturday included four defeats to Brentford, Leeds United, Fulham and Nottingham Forest while away from home, The R’s have recently suffered defeats at Cardiff City, Leeds United and Fulham amidst just 1 win out of their last 5 matches on the road.
The straight win markets where QPR are concerned are therefore best to be avoided but the goals markets do appeal for the visitors as 6 of their 9 away matches have also resulted with both teams scoring.
Highly-rated midfielder, Eze (9 goals) along with forwards Hugill and Wells (8 goals apiece) should also ensure The R’s hit the back of the net here against a Birmingham City outfit who have kept just 2 clean sheets at home so far this season.
With both teams coming off wins on the weekend, we should have a fairly evenly matched contest here with both teams set to score.