Stephen Kelly will be texting Jermain Defoe a request for a goalscoring flurry at Fratton Park tomorrow as Birmingham City seek favours in their bid to avoid an immediate return to the Coca-Cola Championship.

Birmingham need a better result against Blackburn Rovers at St Andrew's than Fulham achieve against Portsmouth and Reading manage away to Derby County and Kelly will be pleading with his former Tottenham Hotspur team-mate to pull out all the stops for one part of the deal.

Kelly concedes that Birmingham's relegation rivals appear to have easier matches. “It can look kind of bleak,” the right back said. “But you've just got to think that, on any day in football, strange things can happen. We have to make sure we do what we need to do, then it's fingers crossed. Reading may be playing Derby, who have not been in the best form all season, but strange things happen.

“I will text Jermain and ask him to knock in a few for me. People are saying Portsmouth will take it easy because they are playing in an FA Cup Final next week, but those players are playing for places. Jermain's cup-tied, but he's a top striker and he'll want to play and finish his season on a high.”

Kelly, the only top-flight player to have played in every minute of every league match this season, has followed James McFadden's pledge to stay at St Andrew's, even if the team are relegated, although he is intent on making sure that Birmingham do everything in their power to win.

“I want to stay at Birmingham,” he said. “I've had two great years here and regardless of what happens, I see my future here. Last season we came up with quite a young team and the team has improved this year for the Premier League, so if the worst comes to the worst, we could bounce straight back up. But we're not thinking about that. Hopefully we'll be in the Premier League next season.”

There will be no rousing pre-match team talk from the manager before such an important game after Alex McLeish admitted that his impression of Winston Churchill before the 2-0 defeat away to Fulham fell on stony ground last Saturday. The preparation, instead, has been done in advance.

“I did a speech last week and it didn't seem to work,” McLeish said. “I thought it was an Oscar performance. It is just about the players believing in themselves at times when confidence is not at its best. Last week my team talk was about challenges. It is not for public consumption, but was about the challenges that lay there for the players over the final games.

“There are loads of ideas and different influences over the years you can use in team talks. But we have shown confidence here and, though we have let a couple of leads slip, we have had some good performances at St Andrew's and not winning them has been the cause of some of our problems.” While Birmingham have lost at St Andrew's only to Chelsea since McLeish took over six months ago, they have drawn eight home matches this season. Having McFadden fully sharp would be a boost. “James has had a reaction to the knee injury he suffered and we're hoping we can get the zip back into him this weekend,” the manager said.

Birmingham took the unusual step of training at St Andrew's yesterday as McLeish fine-tuned his defence's work on set-pieces. “It will be a change for the players and it will get them motivated,” he said. “It was just a question of thinking outside the box.”

Tomorrow, he needs his players to be thinking inside the box - before waiting for the right messages from Portsmouth and Derby.

Friends disunited

With Birmingham City and Reading attempting to avoid relegation tomorrow, the close friendship between David Gold and John Madejski, the clubs' respective chairmen, has been temporarily put on hold. “I've left him alone,” Madejski said. “What could we really say to each other? Que sera, sera? David wants to win, I want to win. That's the way it is. And I'm sure he would much rather they won and we lost. We could wish each other all the best, but it would all sound a bit hollow, a bit superficial.”