City v Barnsley. Match preview

Looking at the top of the Championship it seems clear to me that if we don't want to be left with a dog fight for 6th place we need to win tonight to keep in the mix for places 3 - 5. I'd like to think we could challenge 2nd place, depends on Birmingham who will have three games in hand on us after tonight. Derby are like a runaway train just now and looking good for automatic promotion.

Barnsley come to Cardiff on the back of a midweek home win over Q.P.R. That win took them out of the bottom three but as we've seen before with Southend, Q.P.R. and others that we cannot just expect to beat these struggling teams.

The game tonight is live on Sky Sports 1 and HD1.

City are without the injured Purse and Scimeca, into the squad comes Walton and Redan. It's unlikely that Matt Green will feature but it would have been nice to say that we had Redan Green on the bench. Where's Steve White when you need him?

It's difficult to know if Dave Jones will throw Walton into the line up to replace Scimeca.

Barnsley are expected to name new strike duo Peter Rajczi and Istvan Ferenczi in his starting line-up.

Striker Paul Hayes is not expected to be included in the squad after he turned down a move to Leyton Orient.

Cardiff City v Barnsley
Friday Feb 2nd, ko 7:45pm.