David Gold, the Birmingham City chairman, has criticised Arsenal midfiedler Cesc Fabregas for his verbal attack on Martin Taylor.

Taylor, the Birmingham defender whose tackle broke the leg of Arsenal striker Eduardo earlier this month, has completed his three-match ban for a straight red cardc and will make his comeback in tonight's reserve team match clash with Tottenham.

Fabregas believes Taylor got off lightly for his late challenge which is expected to leave Eduardo on the sidellines for a year.

But Gold believes the Spaniard was wrong to suggest that Taylor deliberately tried to injure Arsenal's Brazilian-born Croatian striker.

"Fabregas has got this wrong and I will stand by Martin through thick and thin over this," Gold said. "It may be his opinion but I would ask him to listen to the majority of voices who have been, in the main, supportive of Taylor. It wasn't a malicious tackle, Martin is incapable of such vengeance. Look at the body language.

"Why is Fabregas still talking about this three weeks after the event? I don't deny that Martin has to take responsibility but he (Fabregas) is talking about there being intent. Is he saying he thinks Martin went into the tackle to deliberately hurt Eduardo? If he is then it's outrageous and it does the player, his football club and football no favours at all.

"This could have happened to anybody and let's hope Fabregas is not involved in something similar one day where he accidentally injures a player. It's time to get off Martin's back and that includes Fabregas and people like Sepp Blatter. They don't know Martin Taylor. I do and I know it was an out-and-out accident with absolutely no meanness of spirit - but he is being demonised. This is an ill-informed judgment by Fabregas and it does not stand up because it is 'guess-timation' on his part."