Four words you hate to wake up to in the morning: Narwich 2, Sunderland 1.
Listening to the last 15 minutes of the game last night my heart was in my mouth. Though it was a shame not to hear Connor Wickham net a last minute equaliser against the Budgies - I found it really exciting.

Two weeks is a very long time in football. Being a die-hard Ipswich Town fan, I got the train to Bristol on the first day of the season. After a summer with no football, the expectation and excitement of the new campaign kicking off was at an all time high. A Michael Chopra brace and [...] Related posts:

1. Why England and Capello Will Benefit From This Summer's Transfer Window.

Its seems that Town's Barmy Army is once again divided.
One half are angry that Paul Jewell played a second choice team last night, effectively dumping us out of the one ray of joy we had last year - the Carling Cup.
The other are relieved, if bothered at all, that we don't have to worry about losing players to injury and exhaustion in 'The Mickey Mouse Cup'.

That was painful. Fulham were excellent, but so bad were Birmingham that the victory seemed almost cruel.

Why should I care? I think it's that about a year ago Birmingham and Fulham seemed so similar: defensively very sound, occasionally prone to lack of invention, but good enough to win enough games to stay in the league.

Arsenal 1 Birmingham 2
Fair play to the manager - he offered no excuses.
But there's no getting away from the fact that this is a deeply disappointing result - not so much in that we didn't win the Carling Cup, but that the trophy drought goes on. Since we won the FA Cup in 2005, we've lost three cup finals and three semi-finals.

Arsenal 1 Stoke 0
This was a good test a few days before we played Birmingham - we got to face some scummy players (good preparation for Bowyer) and we dealt with Stoke's massive aerial presence (good preparation for Zigic).
It was a game we needed to win, and I thought we did enough.

Birmingham vs West Ham Carling Cup Second Leg- Semifinal- January 26, 2011 Final score:- Birmingham 3-1 West Ham ( Bowyer, Johnson, Gardner/ Cole) A stunning second half comeback from Birmingham City that culminated in an extra time winner saw the Blues knock out West Ham 4-3 on aggregate in the semifinals of the Carling Cup.

Lineups are in:

Birmingham: Starters: Foster, Dann, Johnson, Ridgewell, Carr, Ferguson, Gardner, Beausejour, Larsson, Jerome, Bowyer Bench: Phillips, Fahey, Taylor, Hleb, Derbyshire, Zigic, Jiranek

Arsenal: Starters: Flaps, Sagna, Clichy, Koscielny, Djourou, Song, Wilshere, Cesc, Theo, Nasri, van Persie Bench: Wojo, Eboue, Squillaci, Denilson, Bendtner, Arshavin, Rosicky

Well, no real news with the starting lineup it was exactly as I predicted in my preview.