Cardiff City play three home fixtures in three days, including their Premier League clash with Newcastle United.

Craig Bellamy’s under-18 Bluebirds are first up on Saturday when they play Birmingham City in a Professional Development League clash at Cardiff International Sports Campus (11am).

Neil Warnock will then send his Premier League team out take on manager Rafa Benitez and his Newcastle team at Cardiff City Stadium (12.30pm).

Coaches Andy Legg and Jarred Harvey are preparing for their under-23 development teams match against Barnsley at CCS on Monday evening (7pm).

Bellamy’s boys are looking to build on their 5-0 win at Colchester United in their first match of the season when attacking midfield player Daniel Griffiths (2), Sam Bowen, Sion Spence and Isaak Davies.

“We have high expectations for this campaign and we’d like to finish in top spot,” said Wrexham-born 17-year-old Griffiths, a former Liverpool trainee who worked under Steven Gerrard at the Reds’ Academy. 

“We’re taking it a game at a time and next up are Birmingham City. It will be a difficult game, but we’ll go out and give it our best shot and hopefully come away with another three points.”

Team coach Bellamy says: “It will be a tough, tough game.

“Ideally, we would’ve liked to have had a few more games before this one due to the pre-season schedule we had. They reached the semi-finals of the FA Youth Cup last season (losing v Chelsea) and we know that they are a decent group.

“I have a good idea of how they play, but we have to step it up a little bit, if that’s possible, to the intensity that we play at. This is a good group of players and we are expecting a lot of things from them this season.”

Birmingham’s youth coach is Steve Spooner, who started his career with Derby County and made a total of 450 Football League appearances for Halifax, Chesterfield, Hereford, York, Rotherham, Mansfield, Blackpool and Rushden.