BRUM IS BLUE!

Blues aren’t in action this weekend due to the International Break so I thought I’d have a look back at the start of the season, it’s going to be a more sensible look from me as well. I still think we’ll do exceptional but we all know the reality of how tough the Championship can be having spent a fair few years in it before relegation.

Going into the season I’ve been vocal about us winning the Championship, at the minimum getting promotion, and before a ball gets kicked this is how things should be. I know we’ve had a difficult decade (And the rest) but even so I don’t want mid-table consolidation, I appreciate it may well be the sensible approach but I don’t care, I want the ambition to be promotion and I want to believe we can achieve it. I do believe (For now still at least).

Blues are now six games in, four league games and two in the Carabao Cup, with 7 points having won two, drew one and lost one. Blues progressed to the second round of the Carabao Cup but were then subjected to a shock exit as Port Vale halted our progression to the third round. This brings our performance to three wins, one draw and two losses.

I think there’s plenty of fans that would have looked at our league start and been happy with a lower points tally, especially given we’ve faced two of the relegated teams. Personally I think we’re about where we should be, I also would suggest that getting two out of three former Premier League clubs at the start of the season is actually a blessing in disguise. It allows us both to be finding our feet, we’ve only taken one point though at this stage but we’ve not gone into them with pressure or realistically needing to get anything from it.

Blues did well at Ipswich and were unlucky to concede the late equaliser, it could well have been all three points, we looked the better team and it was all guns blazing but we didn’t get past the one goal so allowed ourselves to be open to dropping points. This itself has been a theme for Blues, we never seem to close off games convincingly, if anything this was even an issue last season but the quality of opponent was lesser to the point that Blues were able to see it out. This season won’t be like that and Blues need to be more clinical with their possession.

A convincing performance in the cup continued to feed the buzz (For me anyway) although again a one-nil lead was a score line that should have been higher even at half time but this time Sheffield’s equalizer came early and spurred Blues on for the winner. It looked like Blues would be the “shock” contenders of the Championship after all with the first two performances but Blackburn was next and it was a much grittier affair. For all the complaints about throwing away two points against Ipswich, Blues overcame a 1-0 deficit to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat securing all three points late in stoppage time.

If there was a textbook Blues-in-the-Championship performance the game against Oxford would have have been a perfect practical demonstration of it. I was so bored, it was a team that we should have put to bed but it just dragged on. I’m sure there will be a few games like this throughout the season but I hope not too many!

So, we come to what I think is the biggest reality check we’ve had for a while. Blues against Port Vale were the worst I’ve ever seen any team play under Davies, I can’t think of a worse performance and to top it off Port Vale had only just been promoted to League One so it was a game I certainly half dismissed. A good 12 months and I’d lulled myself into a sense of security with Blues, that it was all smooth sailing now, but of course I should have realised there’d be bumps in the road.

Port Vale came with a plan, played to their strengths and we just looked devoid of vision. Every cloud and all that, Blues no longer have that Carabao Cup as a distraction so you could argue the benefits of not progressing. I don’t think that anyone can be happy with the performance on the pitch, a sentiment that Davies no doubt expressed to his players in no uncertain terms.

Wrapping it up was the Leicester game, a game we played well in but the score line didn’t reflect this. We matched Leicester, another relegated team, in fact statistically we were the better team. An early goal meant we had an uphill climb anyway and Leicester did edge us slightly but they also had the rub of the green and a referee who can’t tell the difference between a red and a yellow. It was the first time that Davies suffered back to back defeats since taking over and I think everyone was a bit disappointed to not come away with a point.

Overall then it’s a positive start to the season, we may well feel slightly aggreived to not have picked up one or two more points than we have but this is Birmingham on the Rise. I look at where we are and to me it seems on track but we really need to score more goals, we won’t do this passing the ball around at the back. I would like to see us take more risks through the middle of the park but I’m not the manager. I just hope goals aren’t the problem come the end of the season.