Forssell hat-trick raises Birmingham hopes of Premiership survival

Finnish striker now has seven league goals to his credit this season

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Mikael Forssell became the first Finnish footballer to score a hat-trick in the English Premiership on Saturday when Birmingham City humbled Tottenham Hotspur 4-1 at home.
      It was also the 26-year-old Forssell’s first hat-trick at club level - he has once performed the feat in a Finnish shirt, against Macedonia in a 5-1 rout in 2005.
     
Forssell nodded home smartly from a perfectly flighted cross from James McFadden on the right to put Birmingham in front after only 7 minutes.
      This should have settled the home team, but did almost anything but - whilst the hosts lived dangerously at times in the first half, giving the ball away with reckless abandon, they were fortunate that Tottenham had clearly brought their B-game to Birmingham, and could do practically nothing right in front of goal.
      Dimitar Berbatov hit a post for the visitors, but that was as near as they got in the first 45 minutes.
     
Birmingham looked a lot more composed after the break. Swede Sebastian Larsson made it 2-0 with a delicious 25-yard free-kick on 55 minutes, and before the hour was up Birmingham found themselves in the unfamiliar and rather unlikely position of being three goals to the good against a side several places above them in the league table.
      Forssell was again responsible, popping up to slot home a loose ball with his right foot after a low cross from Larsson had put the Spurs defenders into a blind funk.
     
Nine minutes from time, the combination of McFadden, Larsson, and Forssell sent the Finnish striker through one-on-one against David Robinson in the Spurs goal and he wrapped things up with a crisp left foot shot.
      Birmingham manager Alex McLeish decided that Forssell had earned his salary for the day, and the striker was substituted two minutes later to a standing ovation.
      Mikael Forssell's contract with Birmingham City runs out in June, and this performance will have done him no harm in negotiating an extension should he wish it.
     
Tottenham got a late consolation goal through Jermaine Jenas, but Birmingham picked up three invaluable points with their first Premiership victory since Boxing Day.
      In so doing they slightly lessened the threat of relegation, although the club are still fifth from bottom and only a point ahead of Reading, who currently occupy the first relegation slot.
     
If a week is a long time in politics, as former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson once declared, then clearly in football the same rules apply, or in the case of Tottenham, just six days.
      On Sunday of last week the North London club collected the League Cup trophy after beating fancied Chelsea at Wembley, while Birmingham scrambled a home point to Tottenham’s arch-rivals Arsenal in a 2-2 home draw.
      That match was memorable mainly for a horrendous red-card tackle by Birmingham’s central defender Martin Taylor, which left Arsenal’s Eduardo with a badly broken leg that will keep the Croatian striker out of football for up to a year.
      Forssell's involvement in the Arsenal game was also abruptly terminated after Taylor was sent off - the Finn was sacrificed after just 15 minutes in favour of shoring up the depleted Birmingham defence.
      Birmingham were badly shaken by the three-match ban imposed on Taylor and by the adverse publicity surrounding the tackle, but on Saturday they rose to the occasion and were fully deserving of their win.
     
Tottenham, on the other hand, looked like a team that had only stopped partying in the early hours of Saturday, and it was hard to understand how they could have won any hardware, except perhaps a wooden spoon.
      The reverse fixture in London in December ended 3-2 to Birmingham, marking the first time since 1976 that the Midlands club had recorded a home and away double over Spurs.
      Tottenham’s Teemu Tainio, who played as a substitute in the League Cup Final, was in the starting line-up on Saturday, but had an unhappy time in the unfamiliar left-back position, and he was replaced at half-time.
     
To many, it might seem surprising that Mikael Forssell has not collected three goals in a club match before, as he was a prolific goal-scorer with Birmingham City when he played for them on loan from Chelsea during the 2003-2004 season.
      The Finnish player was bought from HJK Helsinki by Chelsea in 1998 at the age of only 17, but was loaned out first to Crystal Palace, then to Bundesliga side Borussia Mönchengladbach (where he scored seven goals in 12 appearances), and then to Birmingham.
      Forssell scored an impressive 17 Premiership goals for Birmingham City in 2003/2004, endearing himself to the fans, and he returned to play for them in the following season, but it was then that things began to go seriously wrong for him.
     
He suffered a serious knee injury that kept him out of the game for much of the next season, and although Birmingham persevered and managed to coax Chelsea into selling their investment for £3 million, the 2005-2006 season was also a disappointment as the striker found it difficult to recreate his old form.
      Things did not get any better in October 2006, when Forssell was again hit with a knee injury in training, and this put him on the operating table and kept him on the sidelines until the spring of 2007.
     
Forssell’s absence from the Finnish national team was also a considerable blow - it is well known that the Finns had little trouble preventing the opposition from scoring during the Euro 2008 qualifiers, but the team was also woefully short of strikers who could put the ball into the net.
      Finland played no fewer than seven goalless draws in their fourteen qualifying fixtures.
      Forssell’s resurgent form - after a sticky start, he has now scored seven league goals this season, and has lately won himself a fairly regular place in the side - will doubtless be good news for Finland’s coach Stuart Baxter.
      Baxter will be hoping for a repeat of Forssell’s heroics against Germany from 2001, when he scored twice in a 2-2 draw in Helsinki.
      The Finns begin their 2010 World Cup qualifying campaign in September with a home fixture against Germany. Russia and Wales are also in the qualifying group, along with Azerbaijan and Liechtenstein.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Mikael Forssell joins Birmingham City on three-year contract (13.6.2005)
  Mikael Forssell has had enough of warming the substitutes´ bench (26.9.2006)

Links:
  Mikael Forssell (Wikipedia)
  Birmingham City FC (Mikael Forssell)

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