What have John Eustace, Wayne Rooney, Tony Mowbray
and Mark Venus all got in common? Yes, they’ve all been managers of Birmingham
City this season but for various different reasons. John Eustace was the
manager because he was doing well even though the owners didn’t really want him
because he wasn’t a big name. Wayne Rooney was the manager because the owners
wanted a big name that was known to American markets.  Tony Mowbray was the manager because Wayne
Rooney was fucking shit and suddenly, having a big name for American markets
wasn’t such a high priority. Mark Venus is the manager because Tony Mowbray is
ill and get well soon Tony, one of footballs good guys.  It all adds up to a clusterfuck of a season
for a club that should be pushing the play-off places and that line below sixth
place but instead find themselves being worried about the line near the bottom
of the table.

Having got the FA Cup out of the way with the defeat at Liverpool, this game is
absolutely crucial for Saints chances of nicking an automatic promotion place
at the end of the season. Despite the 22 match unbeaten run in the league,
three defeats in the last four have left us with very little margin for error
especially given the form of Leeds United who currently reside in second place
and looks very capable of chasing down Leicester City. Whether or not Saints
can challenge the top two is certainly going to come down to the away games we
have left at Ipswich, Leicester and Leeds.  Lose to the likes of Birmingham however and
automatic promotion is nothing but a pipe dream.

The season kind of starts here for us now and Russell Martin has to get the
team right and that hopefully includes Flynn Downes who has been pictured in
training montages from Staplewood but didn’t feature in the Liverpool game,
which was predictable and also didn’t feature in the defeat by Millwall.

The main feature of the press conference leading up to this game was the personal
abuse that Will Smallbone got online after the Liverpool defeat, which of
course crossed the line between criticism of him as a footballer and personal
abuse.  I thought it was a good thing for
Russell Martin to highlight and also, good of him to make a distinction between
what is acceptable and what is not.

To the team news and its pluses and minuses as far as I’m concerned. Flynn
Downes is back which is huge but the player who basically replaces KWP in the
lineup it’s of course, Jack Shoehorn Stephens, which means that either he or
THB is going to be playing it right back. Smallbone is in the side with Joe
Aribo the unlucky one to miss out, I presume still blowing out of his arse from
Wednesday night.

Any idea that we were going to be more defensively solid today with Downes back
in the side, lasted all of a minute as Bacuna fires in a crossfield ball from
the left, which is controlled by the hand of Miyoshi, who practically fucking catches
it, and then absolutely smashes it and it flicks off Manning, across Baz and
into the far top corner. Brilliant finish but it’s easy for it to be a
brilliant finish if you’ve patted it down for yourself.  Fucks sake.

It’s nearly 2-0 straight after Adams gets dispossessed in midfield and Bacuna
strides on and takes aim from the edge of the box and it smacks the post,
bounces out onto the back of Baz and squirts wide.

We then begin to play and we are passing through Birmingham’s midfield
relatively easily.  Arma crosses from the
left and Brooks attempts a volley which is down and into the ground and
wide.  Another chance comes and goes as Arma
loses the ball to Laird, wins it back and sends Che Adams in on goal from the
left but his sidefoot is shit and straight at the keeper. Smallbone drives
forward, onto Adams who flicks it round the corner first time to Brooks and he slides
a beautifully weighted ball into Adam Armstrong who takes it first time… goal,
1-1, get in!.  Everything about that goal
is class.  Very close for the offside but
we are owed one for earlier, regardless.

Having equalised, we then go for a variation of the Wee Man West Brom corner
routine and it’s swung over by Brooks and met with a decent header by Manning
at the back post but it hits Ruddy and deflects away, mainly because the old
git can’t get out of the way in time.  Maybe
it’s the snow that’s now coming down but Che Adams looks in the mood today
against his former club and from 25 yards he has a go out of nowhere and it
skids across the turf, past the ageing Ruddy and smacks off the post and wide.  Brooks then feeds Smallbone in what would
have been a repeat of the goal, but his shot hits Ruddy on the arse as he sits
down and squirts wide for a corner. 
Another chance goes begging as we cut through them again and Downes
takes aim from the edge of the box and straight at the keeper.

As we reach 40 minutes with Saints having dominated, there’s a big boot forward
by Sanderson and Bednarek makes a total bollocks of it and it slides off his
head and goes straight to Stansfield running through and he absolutely lashes
it into the top of the net above Baz to give Birmingham a quite frankly
ridiculous 2-1 lead. For fuck‘s sake, again.

Saints try and get back into it before half time and we are knocking the ball
about on the edge of their box until Downes feeds Adam Armstrong once again he
takes it first time and with Ruddy signalling that it’s going over, it dips
late and pings off the top of the bar and out. 
We win it back and create another chance for Smallbone which he drills narrowly
wide of the far post.  Half time and this
second half could well be season defining. 
No changes and off we go.

An early chance with Adams feeding Arma on the left, goes begging with a
scuffed effort at the keeper but next time around, Smallbone gives a short ball
to Brooks, who cuts across the pitch as he always does, onto his left foot but with
no one closing him down, he almost casually bends it round Ruddy and into the
net to level things up again.

From our next attack after the restart we win a corner.  Smallbone takes it and it’s knee-height and
cleared to Stansfield who can only clear as far as Smallbone on the right and
he gets his head up and crosses it first time to the back post where Adams brings
it down, has a little stumble and then manages to poke it into the far corner
of the net. 3-2 and this game is mental. 
Che is calm though with the respectful lack of celebration.

With Birmingham seeing the game slipping away, captain Dion Sanderson then comes
steaming in on Smallbone in midfield and the big clumsy bollocks turns his back
and goes in with studs up in a stamp motion and catches him high and the
referee stops our four on three attack to go straight over and send him off.  To be fair, he thought it was a red card challenge
straight away but if he’d let play go on for even five seconds, Adams puts
Brooks in and we score… or maybe not but the point is, let it go for a few
seconds when there’s a clear advantage – you can still send him off afterwards.

As the game restarts, Bacuna decides to wipe out Smallbone for no readily
apparent reason and the referee does nothing but then Smallbone gets him back
and gets a yellow of his own. He is public enemy number one in the blue part of
Birmingham.  With Edozie having just come
on for Brooks, there’s another change as Aribo comes on for Smallbone.

You would think that our possession-based play and always trying to find the spare
man, would be perfect against ten men but we begin to get a bit ragged as the
Blues fans get behind their team.  After
some sloppy play by Aribo in midfield, Birmingham attack down our right and Laird
stops, goes and pisses past Ryan Manning. 
The cross is pulled back to Stansfield who shoots and sees it hit the
far post and bounce out to Bacuna who can’t miss and doesn’t.  We just can’t defend today.

Substitution time and the face of it there doesn’t seem to be much thought
going into this other than throwing on fresh players with the shit-tuplets of
Sulemana, Rothwell and Mara coming on for Downes, Adams and Manning.  You would say that with our new 3-3-4 formation,
we’re either going to win or lose and drawing is not an option.  Sulemana might make a difference with his
pace but the other two won’t and I’m prepared to put that out there and hope to
be proved wrong.

Sulemana wins a corner on the left and Rothwell hits the first man with it and
then we win one on the left.  Luckily
Stuart Armstrong is still on the pitch to take the corner so Rothwell doesn’t
get the opportunity to put it nowhere near anyone, and he hangs up a ball
towards the 6 yard line, headed down by THB and there is big Joe to take a
touch, swivel and smash it into the net. 4–3-pandemonium.  Three points, thank you and goodnight.

Well, we won and it was ridiculously entertaining for the neutral.  Four goals, a late winner, three points –
what’s not to like about that?  Quite a
lot actually, but first let’s talk about the attacking play which at times was
quite breathtaking today.  We could and
probably scored more than the four we got as we created so many good
chances.  Brooks and Smallbone were
having a field day on our right and the creativity was off the scale but we
missed chances again.  However, if we had
any strikers who were ‘one shot, one goal’ merchants, they wouldn’t be playing
in the Championship for us.

It’s another game where we have basically got out of jail despite being a
fucking nightmare defensively from start to finish. Three really bad goals conceded
which meant that we ended up making incredibly heavy work of it, even after
Birmingham big donkey Sanderson got sent off. 
I can’t get away from the fact that we are letting in so many goals.
Clean sheets get you promoted and get you up the table and we had the magic formula
for that during our long unbeaten run. 
We were keeping loads of clean sheets with a settled back four and
goalkeeper with Downes in front of them.  We can only hope that when KWP is fit that he
comes straight back in right back and Jack Stephens returns to the substitutes bench. We had a brilliant centre back pairing who played off each other and
knew exactly how to deal with long balls pumped into our half for example, but
changing it means uncertainty and the amount of times that our defenders were looking
round at each other proves that the uncertainty is now there. Conceding three
goals against Birmingham is just not good enough. It was another game similar
to Huddersfield and occasionally it will work but more often than not, simply
trying to outscore the opposition knowing that they are going to score at least
two, will not work and Russell Martin knows that.

Make no mistake, Birmingham‘s first goal should never have stood, it was a
fucking blatant handball. Last year I watched JWP put the ball where he wanted
to with his hands and then smash it into the net. Thing is, they were free
kicks and this wasn’t much different. How the ref and linesman can miss that is
totally beyond me but I guess it evens up the THB offside header we had against
them at St Mary‘s.

Saints response to going behind was decent and a good flowing team move ended
with Brooks putting the ball through for a suspiciously offside looking Adam
Armstrong (unproven) to score first time through Ruddy. Adam is much more likely to score
if he doesn’t have to take a touch.

As said, we completely controlled from the 20th minute until the 44th, missing
a few chances and then conceded a goal that wouldn’t have looked out of place on
the Veracity Ground in front of three men and a dog, with a big boot down the middle
and Bednarek being unable to make his mind up between letting it run and
heading it and basically doing neither. Conjecture of course but I reckon if he
was playing centre back with THB, that goal wouldn’t have happened because he
would’ve known exactly where Taylor would be.

The two goals in a few minutes at the start of the second half, along with the
deserved red card for big donkey Sanderson and it looked like we were going to
canter to the finish line. Brooks’ goal was a brilliant finish but shit defending to not put any pressure
on him and Adams’ goal is the product of determination to still score after
slipping over and before that, an excellent piece of anticipation and a superb
pick out by Smallbone.

Everyone of Birmingham persuasion is saying it isn’t a red card but I don’t really
know what they’re looking at as he turns his back on Smallbone and then stamps
down.  Yes, he doesn’t catch him fully
but there’s definitely contact and it’s a dangerous way to go into a tackle so
these days, I have absolutely no surprise that the referee sent him off.  As soon as he turned his back on the player he
was tackling, it just looked like he was trying to do him and even if that
wasn’t the intention, it’s so shit and gives the ref the opportunity.

Ryan Manning is not a great defender. His more obvious gaffes lead to him being
scapegoated and then of course there’s a reaction to him being scapegoated and
people look past certain things, but the way he allowed Laird to just walk past
him and put the cross in that led to the third Birmingham goal was under 11s
defending and his drift infield and leaving his man on the first goal wasn’t
great either.  Jack Stephens didn’t cover
himself in glory on the third goal either, allowing Stansfield to get that shot
away.

And then Joe turns up in the 94th minute. Always believe in your soul etc.  I have never seen him turn and move so fast
when he realises he’s running the wrong way to celebrate with the fans behind
the goal.

The sub-plot of today’s game is the performance of Will Smallbone of course got
two assists for the second and third goals. He’s had a tough week with all the social
media abuse but showed strength of character to come through it.  He plays well when he’s not deployed as a
defensive midfielder.  He’s a good player
when played in the correct position with the right people around him and where
I disagree with Russell Martin is Russell‘s assertion that Will is flexible and
can play number of positions and I just don’t think he is.  Before being switched to cover Downes’
absence, he had been playing well ever since Joe Aribo went to the Afcon and
Joe Rothwell was signed.  Put him back in
the correct position and he plays well again.

Three points and dropped points today for Leeds and Leicester so the gap to the
top two closes. We have to back this up now and break our losing streak at home
when Preston visit on Wednesday. Let’s hope we have the regular back four in
place from the start of the game and up the fucking Saints.