BIRMINGHAM hope to pile on the agony for Sheffield in front of the Eurosport cameras tonight (Monday).
The Tigers are on a run of four straight away defeats since winning at Belle Vue in May.
Fortunately for them it has been a different story at Owlerton where Thursday’s 58-31 win against King’s Lynn moved them back into second place in the ROWE Motor Oils Premiership.
Leicester’s Max Fricke guests in place of the injured Tai Woffinden while Birmingham welcome back Zach Cook in place of Justin Sedgmen, sidelined with concussion after crashing while racing for Edinburgh on Friday night.
Cook was released to accommodate the big-name signing of Freddie Lindgren but the Poole man is back as a guest on Monday.
Birmingham also hand a debut to Michael Palm Toft who has been signed on a temporary contract to replace Steve Worrall who has been ruled out for a month by illness.
To add to that, Brummies are forced into a late change as Piotr Pawlicki sits out after dislocating bones in his hand whilst riding in Poland yesterday. In-form Italian, Paco Castagna comes in to replace him, off the back of an impressive home debut for his new Polish club AC Landshut, top-scoring with 10.
It will be a second visit of the year to Perry Barr for the Tigers who fought back from ten points down in March to clinch a Super Heat victory.
Boss Simon Stead admitted: “We know our away form is an area we need to address and hopefully we can do that at Birmingham.
“I’m sure Birmingham will be desperate to get the win as well so we’re expecting them to come at us; we just need to go there and apply ourselves in the correct manner and hopefully we’ll have too much for them over the course of the 15 heats.”
Birmingham: Freddie Lindgren, Michael Palm Toft, Wiktor Lampart, Zach Cook, Tom Brennan, Paco Castagna, Leon Flint.
Sheffield: Jack Holder, Kyle Howarth, Chris Holder, Josh Pickering, Max Fricke, Jason Edwards, Dan Gilkes.
Words by Holeshot Media.
Images by Taylor Lanning.