Jonathan Greening is backing Birmingham City to survive in the Premier League this season

Nov 23 2009 by Colin Tattum, Birmingham Mail

JONATHAN Greening has backed Blues for Premier League survival this season.

The Fulham midfielder and former West Bromwich Albion schemer said they had enough quality and experience.

“It is always difficult playing against Blues and it was a battling performance by them. They sneaked a goal and then got everyone behind the ball and were tough to break down.

“Last year they won a lot of games 1-0 and you can see they’ve brought that into this year and they are a very hard-working team, have a good shape about them and seem to have a really good team spirit.

“It was a tough, tough game and we knew that beforehand and felt the same after. Even though I thought we had quite a lot of possession, we couldn’t break them down. They’ve definitely got the quality to stay up. The good thing is they have got a lot of experience with people like Barry Ferguson and Lee Bowyer as well.

“Maybe last time they didn’t have that – and they’ve also got Kevin Phillips on the bench.

“They’ve got two fast forwards and James McFadden can always win you a game as well with a bit of genius. I think they are a good bet to stay up this year.”

Alex McLeish said he decided to make the game’s first change and bolster the midfield because he felt Fulham had too much of a foothold in the second half.

Keith Fahey came on for Christian Benitez and Blues went one up front for the last 19 minutes.

“We had to make a substitution because we had probably surrendered too much territory and, if the truth be told, even more so when we went to the extra man in midfield because we still never really got hold of the ball,” said the boss.

“It was then just a case of defending it.”