ROWETT GETTING BEST OUT OF BLUES

BIRMINGHAM may have been beaten by Rotherham but that shouldn’t detract from what a great job Gary Rowett has done.

When he arrived from Burton last season, he looked at the system and said ‘You know what, we haven’t got the best players here. But we’re going to be organised, hard to beat and with the pace in wide areas, we can nick wins’.

That’s exactly what he’s done. They break at terrific pace with the likes of Demarai Gray and David Cotterill, they’ve got a good holdup man in Clayton Donaldson. It’s simple, but it works.

My only concern is that they’ll struggle against teams who sit deep. Rotheram basically said ‘OK, come at us’ and they couldn’t.

But away from home, where the onus is on the other side to force the pace, they’ll be a massive threat to anyone.