Weekend Eye: Down to the Wire

So, what will you be doing on Sunday afternoon? If you're a normal person, you might be tucking into Sunday dinner, taking the dog for a walk or thinking up an excuse to get out of work on Monday morning. But if you're a Fulham, Birmingham or Reading fan, you'll find your Sunday afternoon far less relaxing. Following defeats for Brum and Reading and victory for the Cottagers, one of the most thrilling Premier League seasons in recent memory will go down to the final day, and those three teams will slug it out in a dramatic ninety minutes of football which will decide who survives and who falls back down to the Championship.

But despite many issues still being up in the air, it's actually the teams who have little still on the line who will play the biggest roles in shaping the look of the final Premier League table. Thanks to their 3-1 defeat at Blackburn on Saturday, Derby are now doomed to finish the season with the lowest points tally ever, meaning their match against Reading may not have the bite it might have had. Meanwhile a mediocre 2-0 defeat at Middlesbrough proved Portsmouth have got more than just one eye on the FA Cup final, which will be good news for Fulham, who visit Fratton Park in their final game.

So the short straw has been pulled by Birmingham City who are the only team out of the relegation-threatened trio to be playing a side who still need to be competitive. They welcome to St Andrews a Blackburn Rovers team who are not only on fine form at the moment but also need victory to seal an Intertoto Cup spot.