Well, after the unexpected nonsense at Man U and at home to Liverpool, there came the apparently easy day out at Birmingham. We, as usual, hit the Queen’s in Lichfield and slaked our thirst, eventually mastering the game of Shut The Box before heading off early at the request of the West Midlands Constabulary. After the full body search, we were in, but not at the one and a half hour before kick-off that was demanded by the local polis.

Still, we thought, it might be nice inside. Was it bollocks. £35 a seat. £3.30 a pint, and some of the bar staff quite clearly couldn’t give a shit about their customers. But enough of that, and on to the game.

Gordon
Bardsley Ferdy Turner Richardson
Steed Cana Henderson Reid
Bent Jones

After our heroics on the last two Saturdays, what went wrong? For the first fifteen we were all over them, but for some reason Reid couldn’t get himself into the rhythm of the game. The stewards earned their money with their regular forays onto the filed to remove the inevitable beach balls, but we couldn’t put together any decent passages of play. We had a couple of efforts wide of the mark, and, while Bent always looked about to burst through and Jones always looked about to win a crucial header, it didn’t happen. It took a good block from Richo to keep them at bay, and there were several other moments when it took good defending to keep the score blank. They got on top of us, but the much publicised home crowd seemed completely disinterested, despite the regular runs of Chucho, until we gave away a free-kick and Ridgewell got there first to head home past the helpless Gordon. We played out the last seven minutes of the half, and thought that we’d come back better organised and play as we’ve seen we can play.

Not so. It took only a couple of minutes for McFadden to double the score. An already small-looking wall was reduced from three to two fro some reason, the ball curled over where the third man had been, and we failed to pick up the runner. That runner was McFadden, and he controlled the ball and slotted it past Gordon for the second. Bad defending. Try as we might, there was no real shape to our play, and arguments were everywhere in the visitors’ end. We brought on Zenden, for Cana (why?), Campbell for Steed, and McCartney for Henderson in various attempts to shake things up. Richo predictably moved forward, we tried three up front, and eventually got a grip of the game. With ten or so to go, Reid slung in his umpteenth free-kick of the afternoon and Hart was all over the place to allow Turner to head goalwards. It would have gone in anyway, but Dann could do no more than hoof it into the net to score the eighth OG of our Premiership lives. Random useless fact of the day. Bent almost got on the end of a cross, but that was a foot or so wide and as good as it got.

Despite piling forward for the remainder of the game, there was neither the time nor the quality to get anything else, and, had we got a second, it would have been more than we deserved. Bad day at the office, I suppose, but what Bruce needs to address is the reason why we can look (almost) world beaters for two games, then fail to produce against the “lesser” teams – no disrespect to Stoke, Burnley, or Birmingham.

As for Man of the Match, last week it was Cana who just bobbed the highest in a sea of excellence, while this week it was probably Richardson who bobbed highest in a sea of mediocrity.

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