Doyle hoping for home promotion cheer

COLIN DOYLE has his fingers crossed Birmingham can seal promotion back to the Barclays Premiership on home turf.

City, relegated from the top flight last season, stand on top of the Coca-Cola Championship, one point clear of Sunderland, with third-placed Derby a point further back.

And goalkeeper Doyle knows victory over Sheffield Wednesday at St Andrews this weekend will be enough to guarantee Blues top-flight football for 2007-08 should the Rams fail to beat Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park.

Corkman Doyle, whose last-gasp penalty save from Wolves’ Michael McIndoe earned Birmingham a 3-2 win at Molineux, said: “We have got two games of the regular season remaining and hopefully we can win both, although a win and a draw might be good enough for us to go up.

“The promotion race could go right down to the wire, but we know it is our last home game of the season at the weekend so I am sure the fans will turn out for the lads.

“If the fans do that and if we can get another three points and Derby slip up then we will promoted.

“Obviously, it would be nice for that to happen in our final home game, but we have just got to focus on getting six points in our next two games rather than waiting for Derby to do us a favour.”

The 21-year-old Doyle has been in fine form for Blues since deposing Maik Taylor as first-choice keeper, but the former Douglas Hall netminder stressed it had been a team effort which had brought Blues to the brink of promotion.

He said: “You are always happy when you play well and I am feeling very confident, but it is about the team getting results and getting promotion.

“One minute you can be losing a game and the next minute you could be winning it – we saw that against Wolves on Sunday – so even when it might be easy to give up when you are losing or easy to settle for a draw, this bunch of lads keep going.

“We have stuck at it this season and we are getting our rewards so we are delighted and long may it continue.

“At the start of the season, if someone had told us we would reach this stage we would definitely have taken that because there was a big expectation for us to come straight back up.

“But we stuck together in the dressing room and look where we are now – top of the table.