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Saturday’s EPL play lost as Manchester United put in a shoddy effort against Chelsea and ended up on the wrong side of a 2-1 final score.  It was a very poorly officiated game, with Chelsea’s Deider Drogba scoring his team’s second goal while clearly offside.  In all fairness, Man U may have caught a break on their goal as it was very close to being a hand ball.  Anyway, we’ll go back to the English Premier League for Sunday action between Liverpool and Birmingham City.

Liverpool is currently in 6th place, while Birmingham is in 9th.  The two teams view their performance this season quite differently, however.  Liverpool is disappointed with how their year has progressed after finishing second to Manchester United last season.  Birmingham City, meanwhile, is thrilled with their performance–they were promoted from the Football Championship League last year and would have been satisfied with any finish that kept them from getting sent back down.

ENGLISH PREMIER LEAGUE–BIRMINGHAM CITY VS. LIVERPOOL:

We talked earlier this week about Liverpool’s struggles away from their home pitch at Anfield–in the Premier League they’ve got 4 wins, 4 draws and 8 losses away from home.  If you include the various other competitions they’ve participated in this year Liverpool has won only one game in their L10 away and have now lost 4 straight on the road.  In EPL play, they’ve only scored one goal in their last five away games.

That presents a problem since Birmingham City is very tough at home where they’ve only lost twice this season in Premier League action against 7 wins and 7 draws.  They’ve not lost at home in their last 12 tries, which includes hard fought draws against top teams like Arsenal and Manchester United.  The last five times Birmingham City and Liverpool have played in the Premier League have all ended in draws, including one earlier this year at Anfield.  We look for the home team to play for the draw here, with a small chance they’ll get the victory over a Liverpool side that doesn’t play well on the road.

The best way to play this game is to take Birmingham City +1/2 which you’ll find at Pinnacle and a number of other books. This gives you the win in the likely event of a draw.

PLAY BIRMINGHAM CITY +1/2 +103 OVER LIVERPOOL

Then you can also play the game to end in a draw–if it does, you win both bets.  This line is from Bookmaker:

PLAY BIRMINGHAM CITY/LIVERPOOL DRAW +240