The Battle for 9th is really heating up now. Hello, my Preview blog was mainly focused on the Summer- and building for next season; and judging from the large majority of the game today the players share the same opinion. It was far from a bad performance- it just reminded me of the last 4 or 5 games we would have during the Premier League in the majority of the season we had between The Great Escape and Last Season.
We aren't far removed from the Reading game where the ref was abysmal- so I'd like to balance things up by praising the ref today. This probably won't go down well, but with the exception of a bad 5 Minutes around the 75-80 Minute mark I thought the ref was one of the best we've had this season. He let the game flow- and I think he kept his cards in his pocket with the exception of a booking for either Caddis or Shinnie I couldn't really tell. He also got both penalty- or rather lack of a penalty decisions spot on in my opinion. Because of where I sit I was almost perfectly placed to see the McCormack challenge- and it was a top draw challenge from Davis. Handball is always a hard one to call, Granted I didn't have the best view for it- but it looked to me like he kept his arms pretty close to his body; but that opinion could change once I see the incident from a "TV" angle.
The goals for once came early on- and they were two completely opposite goals. The Rodallega goal was a really well worked move with I think Christensen putting the final pass into Hugo- I've said it in a couple of my more recent blogs where if Hugo gets on a run there's nobody that can stop him and it took a scrappy goal against Sunderland to give Hugo the lift he needed. The Birmingham goal is a hard one to complain about- it was essentially an inch perfect ball that resulted in the goal; cross or shot is another matter. I think Bettinelli slightly lost where he was when Cotterill's ball came in because had he have been in a slightly better position he could have at least got a hand to it- which'd have prevented the goal.
Speaking of Bettinelli- as I've already said I think he could have done slightly better for the Cotterill goal; but he more than made up for it with the number of saves he made from especially Donaldson from a point blank range. It was good to see Bettinelli have a good performance- and especially in the 2nd Half a largely unremarkable game after the unwanted attention he got on Tuesday.
The Defence performed really well today in my opinion, especially Stafylidis. Considering the threat posed by Cotterill the fact Stafylidis had an unremarkable game- is in itself remarkable. Had we have played this game around October/November you can almost guarantee Stafylidis would have given away a penalty up against a winger such as Cotterill. It was Jazz Richards' first game at the Cottage I thought he looked really assured on the ball and really solid from a defensive standpoint- albeit it hardly any of Birmingham's attacks came down their left hand side. The Hutchinson and Bodurov partnership is getting more impressive the more I see it. With the exception of one occasion when someone carved them open to put Donaldson through on goal they didn't let anyone get in behind them- and even in the Donaldson incident Bodurov put him under enough pressure (without doing something stupid) to force his hand and miss- although it still should have been a goal.
Anyone who's been reading these for a while will know I'm a huge fan of Christensen- but he simply wasn't at the races today. He just looked a yard off the pace- and I'm happy he was subbed when he was because he was really struggling by the time he went off; I think his game today was characterised by him misplacing a roughly 5 Yard pass to Richards and putting it out for a throw. With regard to Tunnicliffe the only thing really needed to be said is I hope Parker is back soon- because Tunnicliffe isn't really suited to the role Parker plays as the deepest of the 3 Midfielders and linking the Midfield and Defence. Fofana is a strange player, he shows signs of being a top quality midfielder- but follows up those signs by running the ball aimlessly into a defender. The amount of times he essentially ran the ball away was too many to count- although in the second half it did look like someone had told him to improve because he went from aimless runs to aimless long shots. I'm going to count Kacaniklic in this section- although for large parts of todays game it looked like we were playing a 4-3-3. Kacaniklic had a mixed game- although it is good to see a Fulham player make runs with degree of purpose both on and off the ball, and he always looks capable of making something happen; albeit the end product isn't always there.
As I've already said with regard to Hugo- he's very much a confidence player and you can tell from his body language as much as anything else if he's up for the game. I thought Hugo looked our most likely player to score today, and quite dangerous- You only have to compare Hugo hitting the post from roughly a yard against Reading to him nearly scoring an off balance kind of bicycle kick in the Second Half to see the impact a goal has on him. McCormack had another largely indifferent game- it gets so frustrating that it seems to be either/or with regard to Hugo and McCormack scoring because if both of them could start scoring together we could beat anyone.
The Subs, or rather Sub Kit made today was the wrong one in my opinion- and I'd hate to think he brought on Pat Roberts because the crowd were asking him to. I'll preface this with saying I have no doubt Pat Roberts CAN be a Top Draw player. However in February 2015- he simply isn't good enough from my point of view, and he really wasn't what we needed for the game today. I'd have taken Christensen and Kacaniklic off and brought on George Williams and Cauley Woodrow with McCormack dropping back a bit- because especially in the Second Half we were getting acres of space in the roughly space between the Centre Circle and the Box. This would have added another dimension to our game- and given us an aerial threat that as I've always said that Hugo on his best day doesn't give us, while also adding some more pace on the game from Williams.
Its not really worth nitpicking though- at the end of the day Birmingham have become pretty much draw specialists as of late. We're now sat on 35 Points with 17 Games left- the average points tally for survival in the Championship is 46- and lets be honest, if we can't get 11 Points from 17 Games we deserve to go down.
Thanks for reading as always, the game today was hardly going to set the world alight- and was pretty representative of our season as a whole, in that it was bang average. Anyway we're now headed to the Reebok on Tuesday, and these blogs won't be far behind- so stay tuned for those and lets get that damn 9th Place Finish dammit.
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