Birmingham City 0 v Swansea City 0 - EFL Championship

Friday 17th August 2018

SkyBet EFL Championship

at St Andrew's Trillion Trophy Stadium

Birmingham City (0) 0

Swansea City (0) 0
Attendance: 20,083 (inc. 1578 from Swansea)

Birmingham City:
Lee Camp, Kristian Pedersen, Maxime Colin, Maikel Kieftenbeld, Lukas Jutkiewicz, Harlee Dean, Omar Bogle (Che Adams, 78), Jacques Maghoma, Gary Gardner (Charlie Lakin, 84), Jota, Michael Morrison.
Unused subs - Connal Trueman, Marc Roberts, Connor Mahoney, Viv Solomon-Otabor, Wes Harding.
Swansea City:
Erwin Mulder, Martin Olsson, Mike van der Hoorn, Oli McBurnie, Bersant Celina, Tom Carroll (Dan James, 63), Joel Asoro, Barrie McKay (Leroy Fir, 63), Joe Rodon, Connor Roberts, Jay Fulton.
Unused subs - Steven Benda, Jefferson Montero, Matty Grimes, Kyle Naughton, Yan Dhanda.

The last time that Blues beat Swansea City was back in September 2013, at St.Andrew's when Lee Clark's side knocked the Premiership club and League Cup holders, out of the competition the the third round, at St. Andrew's, in front of a crowd of just 7,470, thanks to goals from Dan Burn, Matt Green and Tom Adeyemi, while Wilfried Bony netted an injury time consolation goal for the visitors in injury time.
The game also marked the (then) Swansea defender Gary Monk's last ever appearance as a player.
After the game, the Swans manager at the time, Michael Laudrup, claimed that his side should've been 4-0 up at half time, before going on to say: Lord Lucan was camping in his back garden, the moon was made of cream cheese and the 1976 Eurovision Song Contest was rigged, so that Brotherhood of Man would win it with their number one chart smash: "Save Your Kisses for Me". The guy is obviously a bit of a loon.

And staying on the subject of 'last times'; tonight saw the first league meeting between Birmingham and Swansea since December 2008. That game finished as a goalless draw at St Andrew's too.
Blues really ought to have claimed all three points tonight, but couldn't quite find the finishing touch to break the deadlock, in spite of putting the Swansea goal under siege at times, with wave upon wave of flowing, attacking football, with Erwin Mulder, the visitors Dutch goalkeeper making some fantastic saves along the way, indeed his agility and reach was such, that the outspoken Birmingham fan in the row behind me, responded to one particular save, with the quip: "That's all we bloody need... Swansea have got that Stretch Armstrong bloke in goal tonight!"

Tom Ross of TalkSport and the Birmingham Mail called it a "0-0 massacre". And suffice to say, the visitors manager, Graham Potter, who took over the reigns at the Liberty Stadium in the Summer, after achieving remarkable success at Swedish club Östersund, said, in the aftermath of the game: "I will be the happier of the two managers, that is for sure. Over the course of the game Birmingham deserved to win the match. But we hung in, stabilised things in the second half and sometimes you have to take what you can get."
Solihull born Potter, actually started his playing career at Birmingham City, during the 1992-93 season, making twenty five appearances for Blues, while scoring two goals along the way.

Barcelona play a high pressing game, as do Jurgen Klopp's Liverpool... and though both of those sides would probably batter Blues out of sight on the field of play, and the connection is tenuous at best, Monk's side utilised a variation of the same tactics tonight, which effectively stifled and overpowered the 'Jacks' all the way across the often congested midfield, where the tempo became somewhat frantic from time to time, especially towards the end of the second half, when the home side upped the tempo in a last ditch bid to claim the three points that this performance warranted... especially before half time, when the game was virtually one sided for long spells.
Birmingham had a top heavy seventeen attempts on goal.
But you don't get any prizes for statistics alone.

Maybe once Omar Bogle has had a run in the team and starts finding the net on a more regular basis, this major drawback in front of the oppositions goal can be addressed. But if I was a gambling man, I'd be backing Che Adams, who only made a ten minute cameo appearance towards the end of the game to come good soon. Form, or an apparent lack of it, is only temporary, class is permanent... and Adams is steeped in it.
Although Blues were beaten fairly and squarely at Middlesbrough last Saturday, regardless of what the narrow scoreline might suggest, and during the interim, they've also been eliminated from the League Cup at Reading in midweek (with a vastly changed line up).

I don't think that anybody present at the opening today fixture v Norwich City, or tonight, would disagree when I say, that Monk's side have been bloody unlucky to have to settle for a point apiece from both of their home games, when they really deserved to win these two games.
Yes, I grant you, if a team doesn't take advantage of more of the chances they create, then they aren't to regularly win on a regular basis, but luck, or rather a complete lack of it, has played a massive part in Blues fixtures at St. Andrew's so far.

It was especially impressive tonight how commendably well Birmingham bossed the midfield, with Gary Gardner, on loan from Blues bitter rivals Aston Villa, stamping his mark on the game in particular, in the absence of his suspended brother Craig, filling the void in a like for like combative fashion, with his hard working and hard hitting presence. Of course, another role that needed filling was the one left by the outgoing Cheick Ndoye, who has rejoined the French Ligue 1 club Angers, on loan until the end of the season, which will effectively see out the remainder of his contract with the St. Andrew's club.
Three successive managers have picked him to appear for Birmingham in a total of forty two games in a little over a year... and the Senegalese national team coach obviously rates him too, but it would appear that he was sacrificed; well, not exactly slaughtered and presented as a peace offering to the EFL's Financial Fair Play body, but moved on as a cost cutting and budget reducing exercise.

I personally saw him as a big, cumbersome and occasionally clumsy player, but all teams in this ultra competitive division, need at least one such competitor within their ranks to man the barricades and bolster the middle of the park, acting as a first line of defence, especially in these days of three at the back. Whether Ndoye's departure will free up funds to reinvest in any more team re-building, or will merely get swallowed up satisfying a list of transfer embargo stipulations, remains to be seen, but I suspect that the latter option will be the case. Either way, the supporters of the club have lost a 'cult hero'... and even if some of his status was tongue in cheek at times, everybody loves a trier. Even my sarcastic pal who compared his mobility to that of the statues outside the Riverside Stadium last week.

Jota, who has flattered to deceive in the opening games, looked to be returning to the kind of form that he displayed towards the back end of last season, when he excelled under the change of management, when Monk was instilled to replace Steve Cotterill, in the nick of time. Blues record signing, at an eye popping five million pounds, when a previous manager splashed the cash to land him from Brentford, was prepared to unsettle Swansea, by running at their defence, time after time.

I heard two comments regarding Jota tonight: two Swansea fans I was chatting to on the train after the game, said he was running rings round their full back all night and enthused generously about his ability, while during the actual game, a Blues supporter, up on the Kop, had shouted out: "Five million quid for a one footed player, how much would he have cost if he'd got a right foot as well!?"

Err... that might explain him running around in circles then! 

But lets be fair, the vast majority of players have one stronger and preferred foot, but still need another one to maintain their balance. 

I actually said last season on this very blog, I think it was pertaining to Birmingham's FA Cup game at Huddersfield; that when Jota plays well, Blues play well (even though they wore all red that afternoon), so long may the "one footed, luxury Portuguese player" (a quote, not my own point of view, I hasten to add), run havoc at opposition defenders, tearing around in circles and creating tricks with his better foot. 

FT: Birmingham City 0 v Swansea City 0

I decided against doing a detailed and blow for blow match report tonight. Because, by the time I get home, at around 1.30AM (re-signalling works = train diversions) on Saturday morning, this game will have been shown live, the re-run will have already been screened... and the match highlights video will be on the club website, YouTube and any number of other sources. 

Check the action out for yourselves, so you too can marvel at how the freakin' hell this game ever actually finished goalless. Right, where the effing hell is this Platform 11A?