With two wins in a row under the belt, Saints head to Birmingham full of confidence, looking to take another big stride up the League table catching up with all the smug bastards near the top. Standing in their way are a Birmingham City side, who have started the the season in solid if unspectacular fashion with a win and two draws. They haven’t exactly been pulling up any trees in those games but Chris Davies will be happy with the five points for his job security, regardless of how they’ve actually played.

There was a lot of noise made by Birmingham fans at the start of last season that they were going to come up from League 1 and run straight through the Championship. That didn’t exactly happen as they pretty much stayed in mid-table all season. It’s a bit of a surprise that Davies is still in a job and you wouldn’t be surprised at any point if the trigger was pulled. For his part, he reminds me a little bit of Phil Parkinson at Wrexham in that I wonder if he is good enough to be managing a club challenging at the top of the Championship, regardless of the players that he’s got his squad.

In his squad are a few decent players to be fair with Jay Stansfield leaving the attack and the likes of Demarai Gray and Patrick Roberts providing threat from the wings. They are however one of the sides in the division where I feel the if Saints turn up and play with the right attitude and intensity, then we have better players and we should certainly be leaving with something. Last year it was a point each with Cameron Archer making himself extremely popular with the St Andrews faithful by scoring our equaliser. Of course, the fact that he came through th system at Aston Villa, went down really well.

Away from St Andrews, transfer deadline days is happening tonight as well which of course is a complete and utter shambles. It’s a shambles enough that it happens after the season has started, but the fact that some teams have got games on that night and some haven’t, is another level of ridiculousness altogether. It might not be the biggest advantage in the world to not have a game tonight, but it’s another example of the powers that be not giving a shit about the integrity of the competition where some clubs (Middlesbrough and Wrexham to name but two) get to concentrate 100% on deadline day and 100% on the game, and others have to split their efforts between the two. Also, if the clubs not playing signed a player on deadline day, could they not pick them the next day, whereas clubs playing on deadline day cannot – matbe there’s a rule to prevent this.

Saints have been in the news this week and it was the inevitable news that Taylor Harwood-Bellis was moving to Aston Villa. After tyre kicking around for a couple of weeks with bids that were always going to be rejected, Villa decided to stop fucking around and pay what we wanted in the first place. Maybe they wouldn’t have got dicked in their first couple of matches if they’ve done that but hey ho, who cares. £30 million for us is good money and for Taylor, it’s an amazing opportunity to go to a club playing Champions League football this season. How long they will be playing at for is open to debate, given the fire sale of their best players from last season that’s happened this summer. They are in a state of flux but even if the football doesn’t go particularly well, Taylor will have at least have doubled his salary and with a four year contract in his pocket, you really can’t blame him. He has been largely excellent in the two seasons that he has played for us in the Championship and deserves to play a Premier League players. He struggled of course in the Premier League but then the whole club from owners, down through the managers and players was a complete shitshow at that time.

There is no sadness or anger from me at him leaving as I accepted he was going as soon as Villa showed any interest. I was irritated at them for taking the piss with their initial offers and find it quite amusing that they’ve had to pony up in the end but in the context of Premier League spending this summer, it’s a drop in the ocean. I guess it could be seen as a bit of a triumph for the board, that they got good money for him but they’re not going to come out of it with any credit if the replacement doesn’t work out. THB was absolutely our best defender and the only natural defensive leader in the squad, before Kevin Schlotterbeck’s arrival. THB would’ve led in all categories and you don’t need any statistics to see how good his passing forwards was, how good he’s heading ability was and how big a goal threat he was. It is very difficult to replace all of those attributes.

It remains to be seen what happens in the hours after this Birmingham game before the window closes, but at the moment it looks like we’re signing the young defender from Nottingham Forest called Zach Abbott, who only has 18 professional appearances to his name and nothing is expected outside of that.

Team news and just the one change, with Tom Fellows coming in for Matsuki on the right. A bit disappointing that one because Matsuki was excellent against Millwall.

We start the game pretty well and there’s a promising direct move up from the back with Schlotterbeck finding Brag, finding Azaz, who then slides the ball through for Larin to run onto. The angle is against the big man and he ends up drilling it straight at the goalkeeper.

Both teams are having ‘beat the press’ issues. Birmingham are trying to play out from the back as well but it’s a car crash, with neither Beadle, nor Klarer looking comfortable in doing so. Klarer rolls the ball back to his keeper and watches on horrified as he plays a complete air shot under pressure from Azaz and it runs out for a corner. Brum are getting about us in midfield and Birmingham‘s press wins the ball back for them and results in a low shot from Priske from the edge of the box which Peretz saves easily.

Birmingham get another chance out of nowhere with a long throw down the left, which Wood leaves for Big Kev to deal with and he tries to knock it back to Peretz but plays an air shot and Stansfield is in and bearing down on the edge of the penalty area with Big Kev behind him and Stansfield thankfully, maintains his early season form and my opinion that he is in fact, a bit shit, and hits the inside of the post from the edge of the box. Fuck me that was fortunate.

We’re finding it difficult to connect anything upfront and Larin is worryingly not the races. Klarer drives forward with the ball to the left-hand side of our area and gets tackled which should allow Fellows to clear the ball but he fannies around and gets tackled and a free cross comes in from Cochrane and Stansfield gets up between the defenders and from about 5 yards, plants his header wide. Thank Christ he shit.

Flynn Downes, complete with ninja headband, is doing well in midfield, but Bragg is struggling and he loses the ball to Solis in the Centre circle, who drives at the centre backs before taking aim and drilling it just wide. It’s all Birmingham at the moment.

Larin does manage to connect play up for one of the few times and we build on the left through Scienza before it all gets a bit untidy on the edge of the Blues penalty area, but Azaz brings some class into the situation with a deft layoff to Larin who has a free shot on his left foot from 15 yards but all he can do is balloon it over the bar.

Another Saints break up the left is ended with Osei-Samuel hauling down Scienza, not for the first time. In comes the free kick from Manning and headed down for Bragg to drive from the edge from the edge of the box which wins us a corner on the right. With half time nearly upon us, Scienza takes it and there’s a short straight run at the near post and up goes Schlotterbeck and bang, what a fucking header that it, ripping past Beadle and into the net. Get in. Saints travelling fans have a new hero and Big Kev ends the half as a legend, having nearly started it as a villain.

Half time and I’m sure that Chris Davies will be throwing his arms out and appealing for something, like he’s been doing throughout the first half. In truth we are fortunate t be ahead given the chances we’ve gifted Stansfield in particular.

It’s a competitive start to the second half, but something is not quite right about us and once again we lose the ball in midfield with Roberts picking it up and he is allowed to run from the right wing virtually unchallenged to the edge of the box before hitting a left foot shot straight at Peretz. It just shouldn’t be that easy.

Despite the latest let off, I’m just beginning the get the feeling that Birmingham won’t be good enough to score and then Roberts finds himself in space out on our left and easily finds a way to find space and get a cross in and Priske is unmarked in the middle and flicks a header past Peretz as easy as you like. For fucks sake. Flynn Downes was closes to Roberts and allowed the cross. For fans of Ryan Manning’s cross blocking, who might be wondering where he was – he was ten yards infield not affecting the play. Kev and Woody end up just looking at eachother.

Matsuki and JWP are on for the ineffective Fellows and Bragg and JWP‘s first involvement to pick up the ball in the edge of the box and hit it and it loops up in the air and Beadle can only flap it out as far as Larin, who tries to side foot it into there but puts it about two foot wide. That’s more or less his last involvement and if he goes to be replaced by Mubama.

Matsuki has been very lively since coming on and gets brought down by Cochrane, who escapes what should be a cast iron yellow card. When the free-kick comes into the mixer, Matsuki finds himself at the back post and gets on to Woody’s flick, and Kuryu vollies it across the keeper and in, but it’s one of those ones where you get excited for about half a second until you realise that the linesman is there with his flag up and it’s one of those ones that no one is arguing about. Balls.

Up the other end we go and a mistake by Bree at right back allows Vicente to cut it to Priske on the edge of the box and with newfound confidence he takes aim and this one is a couple of feet over the bar.

Mubama is the beneficiary of Azaz actually finding a player in a red and white shirt in the second half, and we build until Mubama is dumped on the ground by Gray . It’s just to the right of centre so there is a choice to be made between Manning and JWP. It’s a left footers kick really but JWP is the man and it’s over the wall but Beadle gets a very good sight of it and pushes it away to Bree, but the angle is against him and he drills it into the side netting.

91, 92 and the last-minute chance for either side doesn’t happen.

I find myself pleased that the game is over. There is disappointment there because Birmingham were hard working but not very good and we wouldn’t have had to play much better to win. However, if Stansfield had taken the chances we gifted him in the first half then it would’ve been like the Watford game and us desperately trying to claw something back in the second half against the team who would’ve been happy with what they had.

It was in general a very low quality game from both sets of players, the referee and the two linesmen. It made it quite entertaining for the neutral, but after Millwall, we probably hoped for a lot better. At the end of the day, St Andrews is one of the more difficult grounds to come to in the Championship and we’ve gone away with a point so the attitude has to be to draw a line under it and move on.

Most of all players put in similar kinds of performances today in that there was good stuff punctuated with bad stuff. Kevin Schlotterbeck for example, scored a great goal and in the main defended really well but made a couple of bad errors for on another day could’ve ended with us conceding goals. Daniel Peretz had some dodgy moments but couldn’t do anything about the goal, Nathan Wood had a good game apart from losing Priske for the equaliser. Ryan Manning had one of those games where I just question his attitude towards defending because he didn’t look like he could be bothered. He was ok on the ball, but off it was shocking.

The midfield improved once JWP came on and this is completely unsurprising and I expect him to be starting the next game. Flynn Downes was absolutely everywhere in midfield and was our man of the match by a country mile with the amount of ground he covered. Even he though though got beaten a little bit too easily when he found himself in the left back position just before the Birmingham goal.

The forward line was more or less uniformly of it. Finn Azaz played a couple of nice passes in the first half, but other than that, the longer the game went on the more he just gave the ball away or got knocked off it. Scienza and Fellows on the wings provided very very little and Cyle Larin was running in treacle, showing the importance of rotation – All those four were highly effective against Millwall and nowhere near the levels today. It was somewhat strange that Kuryu Matsuki got left out after Millwall to make way for Fellows, as Kuryu was one of our best players despite not scoring or assisting. I understand wanting to cash in on Fellows scoring a goal but there was for me, no need to make that change at the start and Matsuki was the best of all our forward payers tonight and he only played half an hour.

So, line drawn under the Birmingham game – take a point away from home and move on. Oh look, we’re above the Skates in the table.

This brings us nicely onto the end of the transfer window. You can only really tell further down the line if it’s been successful or not and it depends on how the likes of Dobbin and Mubama progress throughout the season. At the moment I have concerns over both. Zach Abbott is a complete unknown as well but will probably start off in the fourth place out of four central defenders.

In the meantime – up the fucking Saints