ANTHONY GERRARD will be aiming for a belated birthday bonus by helping Huddersfield Town upset the odds at home to former club Cardiff tomorrow.

The centre-back who turned 27 on Wednesday makes no bones about his disappointment over the breakdown of his relationship with Bluebirds boss Malky Mackay.

Gerrard’s missed penalty in the Carling Cup final shoot-out loss to home-city club Liverpool at Wembley a year ago proved to be his last kick in a Cardiff shirt.

The former Everton trainee fell out of favour with Scotsman Mackay, whose side have a 10-point lead the top of the Championship.

And Gerrard, whose cousin, Liverpool and England star Steven, also missed from the spot in the final, makes no bones about his feelings on the matter.

“I didn’t see it at the time but that manager took everything away from me – my self-confidence, my self-belief,” he said in a pre-Christmas interview.

“It was when the people close to me, my parents and wife, said I wasn’t myself, either on or off the pitch, that I realised.

“When it dawned on me what had happened I had to go away and have a little talk to myself and get my head straight.”

Gerrard, who joined Cardiff from Walsall in 2009 but spent the 2010-11 season on loan at Hull, made 75 Cardiff appearances.

The Warrington-based player joined Town on a three-year contract in early August and went on as a substitute in the 1-0 league-opening defeat at Cardiff.

Plenty has happened since, with the John Smith’s Stadium side hitting second spot in September before a run of 12 league games without a win cost boss Simon Grayson his job 15 days ago.

Cardiff, by contrast, have been top of the pile since November, and have won eight of their last 10 league games, with five successive away victories.

Blackburn, Leicester, Birmingham, Blackpool and, last Saturday, Leeds have all been beaten on their own turf.

Former Watford manager Mackay has tasted defeat just six times in the league this term, with his side totting up 20 wins from 29 games to date.

In addition, they have kept five clean sheets in their last seven games, which adds up to a pretty tough task for caretaker manager Mark Lillis and his Town players.

Lillis isn’t helped by a string of injuries, with skipper Peter Clarke (concussion), fellow centre-back Joel Lynch (hamstring) and midfielder Oliver Norwood (foot) all facing tests.

Strikers Jermaine Beckford (hamstring) and Lee Novak (foot), winger Danny Ward (foot) and midfielder Keith Southern (Achilles) are all out longer term.

There’s brighter news with the return of midfielders Oscar Gobern (ankle) and Chris Atkinson (thigh), who both featured in Monday’s 1-0 development win at Sheffield United.

And supporters will be wondering whether Lillis, going into his fourth game at the helm, will hand a chance to Duane Holmes.

The 18-year-old was on the bench for Lillis’s first game, the 1-1 FA Cup fourth-round draw with Leicester which set up next Tuesday’s replay in the East Midlands.

And he notched both Town goals in Tuesday’s 3-2 FA Youth Cup fifth-round defeat at Nottingham Forest.

With James Vaughan and Alan Lee, another Cardiff old boy, Town’s only fit senior strikers, Holmes looks likely to be in the 18 at least.

Cardiff have few injury worries as they aim to stop Lillis collecting a second home win after Crystal Palace were beaten 1-0 nine days ago.

Former Crewe, Bristol City and West Ham striker Nicky Maynard, a £2.5m August buy from Upton Park, is out with knee ligament damage.

But Mackay has plenty of frontline options after signing Huddersfield-born Fraizer Campbell for £650,000 from Sunderland last month.

Campbell appeared as a substitute to chalk up the debut goal which sunk Leeds at Elland Road.

But he may have to make do with a place on the bench again.

Experienced duo Craig Bellamy, the former Manchester City man who featured as Wales beat Austria 2-1 in Swansea on Wednesday, and ex-QPR player Tommy Smith are set to start up front.

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