Birmingham City 0 v Preston North End 1 - EFL Championship

Saturday 21st September 2019
SkyBet EFL Championship
at St. Andrew's Stadium
Birmingham City (0) 0
Preston North End (1) 1
Sean Maguire 23
Attendance: 20,806 (inc. 1,518 away fans)

A solitary Sean Maguire goal, deep into stoppage time, was all that separated these two sides, the last time that they met, in the bucketing Lancashire rain back in March at Deepdale, on possibly  the wettest of days ever known to humankind, since Noah set sail on his Ark, laden with mating pairs of every kind of animal species on the planet, apart from (apparently) any Unicorns. Which would explain why you've never actually seen one.

The Lilywhites were lucky to get away with their smash and grab raid of all three points that afternoon, in front of a crowd of 17,509, which included 5,225 travelling Blues fans, who'd chosen to mark the occasion with a 'flag day', to pay their respects to their fallen friends, loved ones, comrades, family members and fellow Blues.
Fast forward six months... and, well, would you credit it? A solitary Maguire goal, was all that separated these two sides this afternoon too.

Blues need Maikel Kieftenbeld back from injury in the new year, so that he can 'tackle' Maquire properly in the first couple of minutes of the return fixture in April, to harness the Lillywhites play-makers enthusiasm, in a match that will mark the penultimate game of the Championship season for both sides... unless of course, either, or even both of them are involved in the play offs.
That isn't a prophecy by the way, because this division is far too unpredictable for me to indulge in any of that kind of malarkey... as indeed are today's host side.

#HeyJude

Alex Neil's PNE side arrived at St. Andrew's today, having won all four of their home games in the Championship, but having only picked up a solitary point on their travels, when they drew against Nottingham Forest at the City Ground, on the same afternoon that Jude Bellingham was creating history against Stoke City, when he became the youngest ever Blues player to score he first team goal for the club. He struck again last weekend at Charlton Athletic too, meaning that Pep Clotet's side went into this afternoon's game off the back of two wins, and level on points with the fifth placed visitors, who would ultimately end the afternoon in third place, just a point behind the top two sides, Leeds United v Swansea City.

Stephen Martin: "And you guys are getting fook all from me today!"

I was a little bit concerned when I saw the name of Stephen Martin was on today's team sheet as the match referee, and worried that it might have been the Stephen Martin, the seventy four year old American comedy actor of the same name... and having watch his display this afternoon, I'm still not convinced that my worst fears weren't confirmed. Martin's stand up comedy act and a good few of the films he's appeared in have had their moments, but he wasn't even mildly amusing today, and though Blues were the architects of their own downfall today, for allowing Preston to effectively squeeze them out of the running (using exactly the same game-plan that Garry Monks Blues side used to good effect so often last season), while frequently failing to complete a whole myriad of passes, that allowed the visitors to snaffle up possession far to easily and far too often.

"Are you Blackpool in disguise!?" sang the jubilant away supporters, as Blues seemed to forget how to do everything that they had done so well at Charlton last week, while Patrick Bauer was a tower of strength against Lukas Jutkiewicz, the latter of whom was seemingly fighting a losing battle against the less than impartial Mr Martin too, who didn't appear to like the Blues striker one bit.

It might be slightly harsh to suggest to the referee had a personal vendetta against Birmingham's number ten... but only ever so slightly.

Preston took the lead halfway through the first half, when David Davis ended Maguire's run towards the Birmingham area, by tripping the influential inside forward/attacking midfielder/awkward cuss.

and in Davis' defence, that was probably the only way that Maguire was going to be stopped at that precise moment in time.

Preston's captain Paul Gallagher took the resulting free kick, that Lee Camp did well to reach, pushing the low shot against the upright, but the predatory Maguire had followed the ball in and squeezed it past the Blue keeper from a tight angle as it rebounded off of the post.

The Opta stats man, said that Maguire's strike had been the first shot that either side had managed to get on target in the game thus far... hmm, so what about the one that Camp just saved? Concentrate harder and do your bloody job properly mister.

Mind you, the loudmouth who sits a few rows behind me who blamed Camp for not having pulled off two saves within the space of a nano-second couldn't have had a clear view of what actually happened either.

There were a number of players wearing the royal blue today, who didn't entirely cover themselves in glory, but for some, Camp will always be the scapegoat, whenever anything goes awry.

Often, falling a goal behind galvanises a team, but if anything it had the opposite effect on Blues today, who had Maxime Colin and Harlee Dean to thank on a couple of occasions, when the ball had been passed to the opposition inside the Birmingham half.

Prior to today, Pep Clotet's side have only scored one goal during the first half of any Championship game, but they usually up the tempo in the second... and that was the case today, but alas, the visitors became even more dogged in defence as the game progressed too.

Colin got forward and on the right and put a dangerous looking ball into the Preston area, that a defender turned away for a corner, with his arm. So all things being equal, the referee had no option but to award a pena... oh! A corner kick... WTF!

I'd just like to say that I always thought that Michael Caine's performance carried a rather weak Stephen Martin portrayal of David Niven's role in the original version, of the film 'Dirty Rotten Scoundrels'. But today, Martin was making amends and was faultless in the guise of a 'great big cheating dirty rotten scoundrel'. I'll never watch any of his films again, not even that one where he co-starred with Alec Baldwin and Meryl Streep.

Jaques Maghoma, Álvaro Giménez, and later Fran V*llabla, were introduced from the bench, to freshen up Blues attack and though Blues finished the game on the front foot, PNE stood strong and repelled a wave of late attacks.

Giménez did get the ball in the back of the net, making a run to get on the end of Jutkiewic's delivery across the face of Declan Rudd's goal, but the assistant referee: Mark Jones had his flag up for offside, much to the relief of the Preston defence... and Mr Martin.

For the record, it was a tight thing, but the eagle-eyed linesman had made the right decision.

FT: Birmingham City 0 v Preston North End 1

I missed the email from the EFL decreeing that blatant time-wasting, from the thirtieth minute onward, will go unpunished, on the proviso that Declan Rudd, the PNE keeper indulges in it at St. Andrew's, but Stephen Martin must've received it.

Alex Neil set out his stall for Preston 'not to lose' this afternoon... and they didn't.

Stephen Martin contributed to the result with his, at times, unfathomable antics... but Blues didn't deserve to win today. In fact the only positive that I can pick out of the bones of this outing, is that all footballers have off-days every now and then, and at least Blues got several below par displays out of the way in one go, before they travel to Pride Park next weekend... three days after facing Derby County, Blues are on the road again, when they head to Wigan Athletic.

For the record, Derby are eighteenth in the Championship table, while Wigan are nineteenth.
PNE, for their part, face Brsitol City at Deepdale next weekend, via a midweek home League Cup game against Manchester City.

Stephen Martin meanwhile, will be appearing in the Simpsons this coming week, because Herschel Shmoikel Pinchas Yerucham Krustofsky, AKA Krusty the Clown is on holiday and Matt Groening was desperate to bring in a replacement at short notice.