Birmingham City 4 v Leeds United 5 - EFL Championship

Sunday 29th December 2019
SkyBet EFL Championship
at St. Andrew's Stadium
Birmingham City (1) 4
Jude Bellingham 27,
Lukas Jutkiewicz 61, 90+1,
Jeremie Bela 83
Leeds United (2) 5
Helda Costa 15,
Jack Harrison 21,
Luke Ayling 69,
Stuart Dallas 84,
Wes Harding OG 90+5
Attendance: 22,059 (inc. away 1,980 fans)

The ground staff must be happy that stadium's lodgers: Coventry City, don't have another home fixture here, until January 11th as this afternoon marked the beginning of three Blues games to be played at St. Andrew's, in the space of just six days, with title/promotion-chasing Leeds United rolling into town, to mark the end of what has been a rather tumultuous decade for both of these two sides But hey! When have things ever been any different to that end for either of these clubs?
That is a rhetorical question, by the way.

The 'Pep Clotet has left the building' type rumours were rampant, once again, in the build-up to Birmingham's Boxing Day's trip to Blackburn Rovers, where, they drew 1-1 against the same side who they will be facing, at home, in a 12.31PM kick off on Saturday, when they go head to head, with Tony Mowbray's Lancashire based side, in the third round of the FA Cup.
Meanwhile, Wigan Athletic are the visitors on Wednesday afternoon (AKA next year), for a Championship fixture that kicks off at 3PM. It's all go round here, innit!?

Wigan themselves drew 0-0 with Blackburn, two nights before Christmas and subsequently climbed off of the foot of the Championship table... but their 1-0 defeat at Nottingham Forest today saw them slip back to the bottom of the pile, so as a consequence, they'll no doubt be fighting for some kind of favourable result at St. Andrew's on Wednesday... if you look closely you can probably see the strings joining most of the teams in this division together.

As per usual, the train journey out of Birmingham was *lively* this evening, given that the service I use is the same one frequented by visiting supporters whenever 'Leeds! Leeds! Leeds!' are travelling to the west Midlands. It's often character building stuff and probably not for the faint-hearted, but after all of these years I'm actually on nodding in acknowledgement (and even first name) terms with a good few of the established and time-served old heads from their manner.

That said, it would be fair to say that a prevalent undercurrent of animosity between a section of the followers of today's opposition sides, that goes back a long way, was cranked up a few notches by events at the end of Blues visit to Elland Road in October.
Marcelo Bielsa's side are at West Bromwich Albion on Wednesday (5.30PM) in a second v first, top of the table clash, when Blues are at home again too, so at least it won't be standing room only all the way home, in every single carriage that night. Woo hoo!

 

Any road, without any further ado... what the bloody hell actually happened out there, on the field of play, this afternoon?
Well, for starters, the Forfar v East Fife type final score headline at the top of this post, is not a typo.
There genuinely were nine goals scored over the duration of the ninety-plus minutes today... and two of them (one at each end) were netted by Birmingham players, during stoppage time.
There are numerous schools of thought that could be applied to pick the bones out of a completely barmy game of football such as is... and not all of them would be overly complimentary.

Some of you might think that I am being unnecessarily churlish for entertaining any kind of criticism regarding such a goal-fest, 'nine-goal thriller' of a game, but I would counter that by saying: Wow! I'm all for open, attacking and attractive football and seeing the ball bulge the bag of the net on a regular basis, but FFS! Were certain defensive players still on their Xmas holidays or even merely wandering around aimlessly on the pitch and purely there for decorative purposes alone?
It's the festive season, so in the spirit of extolling 'goodwill to all men', I will refrain from singling anybody out, or naming and shaming, while recognising the fact that under the circumstances, I probably don't need to.

Blues made a decent enough start during the evenly balanced opening exchanges, but all of a sudden, just after the quarter of an hour mark: crash, bang, wallop, Pep Clotet's game-plan fell to pieces spectacularly, as Leeds stormed into a two goal lead, with a brace of strikes within six minutes of each other, that effectively saw Jack Harrison, now halfway through his second one year loan from Manchester City, effectively take hold of the game by the scruff of the neck, while unlocking whatever formation Blues back-line was supposed to be playing, with consummate ease.

the first of those goals, came straight from a Birmingham corner, that Liam Cooper cleared as far as Harrison, who surged forward before rolling a through ball into the path of Helder Costa, who turned Maxime Colin before planting a low shot into the bottom right hand corner of the net, beyond the reach of Connal Trueman.
Harrison then picked up a sideways pass from Ezgjan Alioski, before claiming a goal for himself, with Trueman stranded and wrong-footed as the ball took a wicked deflection off of Harlee Dean.

In the twenty seventh minute, with several experienced players seeming to be out of sorts and off of the pace of the game, it was sixteen year old Jude Bellingham, who showed maturity and composure beyond his tears, to take responsibility to claw Blues back into the game, when he shimmied his hips to make himself a yard of space on the edge of the area, after collecting the ball from Colin and planting it emphatically past Kiko Casilla.

The youngsters strike saw Leeds rearrange their pack and see the remainder of the first half out with a single goal advantage.
HT: Blues 1 v Leeds 2

No quarter was being given after half time, as both teams battled to get a foothold and in the sixty first minute, Colin's corner found Kerim Mrabti by the back stick, whose header was pushed away by Casilla towards Lukas Jutkiewicz, who snaffles up chances like that as a matter of course and he nodded the ball into the visitors goal to level things up.
The chant of "Leeds, Leeds are falling apart, again" filled the air as the home crowd celebrated a complete reversal of their teams fortunes... slightly prematurely as it turned out.

Luke Ayling, who, along with Costa, had posed a serious threat to the home defence out on the right all afternoon, restored the visitors lead in the sixty ninth minute, with a well struck angled right-foot shot, that fizzed in, just inside the left hand post.
But the gloves were off now and though the hosts defence, and possibly even Leeds' to a lesser extent, dropped their guard, Birmingham were level again thirteen minutes later, when Jeremie Bela, who'd merely been a spectator when Ayling had left him standing to score the aforementioned third goal for the visitors, got onto the end of Kristian Pedersen's free-kick and glanced the ball past Casilla to make it three apiece.

As I have already mentioned, several players were showing all of the defensive attributes that you'd associate with a chocolate fireguard... and sure enough, there were still goals to be had in this topsy-turvy, completely crazy contest... and it was Stuart Dallas who claimed the next one, hooking home the ball from Ayling's delivery, with just six minutes of the scheduled ninety remaining.
As the game careered headlong into stoppage the thrills and spills showed no signs of abating, as Jutkiewicz hoovered up a low cross from Bela to level things up yet again.
Surely that was it now... but no, there was still a cruel twist incoming to give the visitors all three points from this pulsating encounter, when Wes Harding turned the ball into his own net, while under pressure in his own six-yard box as he tried to clear Ayling's cross, as the visitors number two was once again granted the freedom of St. Andrew's to inflict untold damage on the host side.
FT: Birmingham City 4 (Four) v Leeds United 5 (Five)

It was a most compelling encounter, even though the defending... or more to the point, a complete lack of it, was a major cause for concern. The all-action Blues have now given Leeds United and West Bromwich Albion, the top two sides in the Championship, a bloody good run for their money in recent weeks, but the facts of the matter are: regardless of how gung-ho and attack-minded they are at times (though not always as the recent defeats against QPR and Hull City illustrated), Clotet's side have now only won one of their last eleven games and though the vultures aren't circling over Small Heath just yet, given that there is still an eight point cushion between Birmingham and the clubs battling against relegation, the situation needs addressing and sorting as a matter of no small urgency. Wednesday would be as good a time as any to make a start.

On reflection it was an enjoyable game, in a surreal kind of way, that will stick in the memory of all those present for a long time. And nobody could really complain about the entertainment on offer, or either team's willingness to keep finding the net. Even though some of the defending on display was of the laissez-faire, cavalier and undeniably slapstick variety. Which is a real cause for concern going forward. 

Blues had two of their defensive options missing in action through injury this afternoon, but those that did play weren't exactly off the inexperienced newcomer chucked in at the deep end variety.

I doubt very much if I'll see another game quite like this one again this season.

That's me all done with football for this year/decade... see you all again in 2020.