Duke wants to start

Ellington, who scored his first goal since November on Saturday, has told Baggies chief Bryan Robson that he can fire the goals to keep Albion in the Premier League.

Ellington said in an interview with the Birmingham Mail, “I've been confident, even though I haven't scored for a while, that I can come on and make a difference,

'I know that if I get a chance I'm going to score. It was good to get off the mark again and important we didn't lose against Birmingham.

''No player is happy to be in and about the team and on the bench, I'm a player who wants to start games and show what I can do.

'It's quite hard to come on for ten minutes and show what you can do in that little time.'

I hope that Robson reverts back to Ellington and Kanu up front after they showed signs of the form they were in before Kanu went to the African Nations Cup in January. They showed some fantastic link-up play on Saturday and it would be great if they could both regain that understanding and form.

Ellington still can't get his head around the injury time chance that hit the bar on Saturday, Ellington said, ''I tried to put it in the bottom left, somehow it went up so maybe there was a bobble on the pitch.''

If only that had hit the net, oh well it's going to be a nervy couple of months and with Pompey winning both Albion and Blues will be looking over their shoulders with the run of fixtures both teams have it could be pretty interesting.

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