Blues are proving where there’s life, there’s hope
AT half-time at the Cardiff City Stadium it was almost impossible to harbour any optimism about Birmingham City’s survival prospects.
When patients are ailing you watch with intense scrutiny for any signs of their condition, physical indicators of whether they are getting better or worse.
Three goals down and with a worrying inability to protect their own goal, the prognosis was not good.
Cardiff were having so much joy evading the Blues’ defence you didn’t have to be too pessimistic to envisage another heavy away-day defeat.
By the time they sloped off back into the dressing room Blues’ spirit looked fatally low. Yet to their credit they rallied. Garry Monk tended to the most obvious wound, the right side of his defence which, like a gangrenous leg, had endangered the health of the whole body.
Carl Jenkinson, who had actually done well in attack, was replaced by the more defensive Marc Roberts.
The patient stopped getting worse and after 54 minutes was given a dose of good fortune.
Referee Peter Bankes saw a tug on Roberts’ shirt at a corner and Craig Gardner assumed the responsibility for the spot-kick, which pulled a goal back. Bluebirds manager Neil Warnock made a song and dance about the penalty – and, arguably, rightly so.
The apparent infringement on Roberts did not look much different to anything that had gone before in the previous dozen corners. However, his suggestion it was the only way Blues were going to drag themselves back into the game was unfair. They were struggling badly at one end of the pitch but Warnock’s assertion ignored the fact that, for all their defensive shortcomings, Birmingham had actually caused his team problems for the opening 45 minutes at the other end. They continued throughout. With Roberts trying his best at right-back, Blues continued to throw punches, Sam Gallagher played with more determination up front and Che Adams’ arrival gave them a little bit more flair. As they pushed forward the to do that right limb remained a problem and Junior Hoilett could have settled it as a contest.
But a contest it remained – and how different a contest it might have been had Michael Morrison done anything other than hit the goalkeeper from point-blank range in the 65th minute.
Three-two at that point and it would have been the home team feeling unwell and the visitors stirring from their beds. Eventually it ended that way. In stoppage time Maxime Colin had enough of Jeremie Boga’s fiddling about and spanked the ball past Neil Etheridge.
There was no time for Blues to make a full recovery but at least a sign that, where none existed 45 minutes earlier, hope remains.
In the end Birmingham City might not salvage their situation but they showed they have it in them to continue trying. And where there’s life, there’s hope.