For me, i would play my strongest team against birmingham & chelsea so that we can get our league campaign going and also scoring a psychological victory against chelsea (given that we would be playing them 3 more times this season).
That last thing we wanna do is put on a somewhat weak team against birmingham and get another 0-0 draw (or worse lose) and then go on and lose to chelsea (and see chelsea_clinton come here and create 10 new threads about chelsea and how good they are

So we should play our best team and start our season rolling.
This is my team..... Gerrard has to play right wing. I can't bring myself to watch garcia or pongolle play there anymore...it is just too painful. It really hurts.
Reina
Finnan Carra Hyppia Warnock
Alonso Sissoko Hamann
Gerrard Risse
Crouch
Subs
Carson
Traore
Garcia
Cisse
Pongolle
- Drop Garcia because he needs a kick up his a$$. Shocking performance against the scums.
- Drop Cisse because, lets face it. Cisse and Rafa has major issues. Even when Cisse was coming on to replace crouch, you can see he was ignoring rafa's instructions to him. Cisse won't be here in January.
- Gerrard & Risse to concerntrate on attacking only and putting in crosses for crouch. Should be able to score a few goals.
- With the defence we have and a 3 men central midfield, birmingham won't even get into our penalty box.
Lets start our season rolling against birmingham .....
