BRUM IS BLUE!

I’ve been vocal in my desire for back to back promotions, I have slightly caveated it with the acceptance that the Championship is no easy feat but the belief we can achieve this. We’re getting closer to when I need to issue the profit warnings and revise down this seasons projections, that said I’ll only really be revising it to what the sensible supporter probably saw our season playing out as to begin with.

Yesterday was (For sheer lack of another expression and having seen it repeatedly describe as so) a sheer sh*tshow! From start to finish it just seemed to be an absolute shambles, players looked out their depth, looked scared and even at times looked like they’d never played football before. The lack of a plan b was also quite painfully obvious and the possession based football that I’ve been against since last season isn’t the football we appear to be able to play in the Championship, at least not against every team in it.

It was a painful watch and I was glad I’d not splashed out the £45 to be there in person. I’m yet to be convinced by Bright Osayi-Samuel brings much to the team so being unable to take a throw in (As a professional is laughable), giving away an own goal and the usual running into nothingness with no end product was certainly not winning him any brownie points with me. Of course Bright wasn’t the only player to not turn up at the back and two clumsy challenges from Robinson, again both were poor at a professional level, were enough to see Blues reduced to ten men at a goal behind making a mountain out of a molehill.

Blues will be eager to see Cochrane return to full fitness as it’s been clear we’ve suffered without him. Klarer is a force but he doesn’t seem 100% there himself at the moment, the partnership he and Neumann were growing at the start of the season seems to have grown cold. If we’re to build from the back, the back needs to be absolutely solid because somehow our attacking options have done the usual Blues thing of not scoring despite some of the quality we have brought in.

Ducksch hasn’t yet really shown himself to be a decent attacking option and managing to suffer an injury in the warm up is a bit of a concern. Dykes stepping up to the starting line up probably showed why he’s better utilised as a Super Sub but then we’re looking at a limited pool as well as a limited chance to switch formations up. Kyogo hasn’t hit the ground running but you could argue that for the type of striker he is, he’s not had the service to get the best out of him. Kumas probably had one of the best opportunities of the game but failed to take the shot, twice, so when Iwata had it at his feet and took the shot it was too late.

I know a lot of this isn’t taking into consideration the two games Cov banged in a lot of goals, showing what they are capable of, it also doesn’t take into consideration that they were unlucky to miss out via the Play Offs. Coventry aren’t a poor opposition, they were off the pace though heading into this fixture with three draws since the two emphatic victories but turns out it was our turn to be on the end of it.

If you look not just at the Coventry game, but of the three defeats on the road as a whole, one was against a recently relegated team, one was against a team who just missed out of promotion via the Play Offs, Stoke could be the one that you say we should have had a better result against – even factoring in a realistic view of it and looking objectively – but they have started very well this season. The less hysterical, lower expectation reaction is surely that actually we’ve got 10 points on the board which, for a newly promoted team, isn’t too shabby I guess.

It is a lot to ask to get anything against teams of that calibre, I probably wouldn’t be so harsh (Even with my ambitious expectations) if I saw signs that Blues were in these games. My concern centres around the manor of defeats, I wouldn’t mind if they gave their all and were just unfortunate. I think we’ve instead gotten progressively worse since the start of the season. We need a statement reaction when we face Sheffield Wednesday on Tuesday, if we don’t even manage a win then I do think Davies will have to come up with an entirely new plan of attack!