So the appeal against Thomas Vermaelen’s sending off against West Ham has failed. It is not a surprise that the Football Association have backed their officials on Saturday, but it will be interesting to see what fixtures Mr Halfwayline and his hallucinating assistant are rewarded with in the coming weeks.

The enforcement of the one match suspension is being touted as a good thing, meaning the Belgian gets a proper rest before facing Barcelona at the Grove next Wednesday. I’m not of that persuasion.

On Saturday we face game seven of the thirteen consecutive wins we believe we need to land the Premiership. We know full well that Birmingham City will provide a robust test of our credentials. In January Manchester United needed an own goal to salvage a point from a 1-1 draw at St Andrews. On Boxing Day Chelsea could not score there and also came away with just a point. The hosts haven’t lost at home since September.

I would very much have liked to see Vermaelen available for the trip. Let us separate this game from Barcelona. Let us separate the Premiership from the Champions League. Winning the domestic title is the greatest measure of the team’s consistency over the course of the season, and I am hugely against not going with our strongest available line-up on Saturday.

So I am a little concerned at the interpretation being placed on Arsene’s comments in the post West Ham press conference. Talking of Sol Campbell, he said

“I think I have to give him a week holiday next week, to help him to recover.”

That has been represented as him ruling Sol out of the Birmingham game to be fit for Barca. A pairing of Alex Song and Mikael Silvestre is being proposed, presumably on the basis that we are ‘only’ playing Birmingham. Apart from those two results above, ‘only’ Birmingham also drew away to Liverpool, and at home with Manchester City and Tottenham. Oh yes, it’s ‘only’ Birmingham.

Anybody care to remember where our last title challenge went belly end up? Oh yes, ‘only’ Birmingham. I want to us to beat them so badly to exorcise some of the demons of that day, but most of all I want us to beat them because I want us to land the Premiership title this season.

Now Thomas Vermaelen will be back for Barca. If Sol is worn out from his weekend exertions the boss can just make the one change for the Champions League. If that means leaving Alex Song at the back, then so be it. If the boss decides he needs Song in midfield then Mikael Silvestre can demonstrate at long last that he can cut the mustard for us at the highest level.

For goodness sake though, do not go to Brum with an untried pairing of a stand-in and our fifth choice centre-half. Campbell and Song looked fine for half a game last Saturday. For one more game we need to see them together. I know Birmingham don’t have a Messi, but they still have payers who could give the wrong partnership an absolute nightmare. It’s a risk not worth taking.