ADAMS IS THE ACE AS BLUES SCORE...
AT LONG last Birmingham got a goal – but they still had to cling on for their first win in over a month.
It has taken 436 long minutes, since Steve Cotterill’s first game as the Blues’ latest manager, for them to score – and again it was Che Adams who got it.
To add to the triumph it was Adams’ 50th league game for Birmingham and it took them out of the Championship’s bottom three.
Adams in fact is the only man who has scored for Cotterill in his six games in charge.
Perhaps emotion got the better of Cotterill, but he ducked the postmatch press conference and sent in assistant boss Lee Carsley instead.
Or maybe Cotterill was finishing off the last of the champagne, celebrating the climb out of the relegation zone for the time being.
They should have had more goals in a first half in which they played their best football for a long time – signs that Cotterill is beginning to make an impact after all the managerial chaos that was started off by the shock sacking of Gary Rowett just under 12 months ago.
But the fact they couldn’t find another goal from Adams or anybody else caused Birmingham to be uncomfortable.
Nottingham Forest got back into the game and with a bigger threat up front they would have taken at least a point.
It took two Tomasz Kuszczak saves in the last few minutes to stop them doing just that.
Kuszczak flew to his left to turn away a drive by substitute Jason Cummings and then got down low by his right-hand post to dive on a deflected shot from another Forest benchman in Zach Clough.
“We made a mistake after five minutes and gave a soft goal away,” said Forest manager Mark Warburton, who had hopes of breaking into the play-off places before the clash.
“You can’t give an opponent something to hang on to. In the second half, I thought there was only one team in it.
“It’s about taking your rewards and with a little bit of finesse and quality we would have done that.”
Adams’ goal was so welcome, and if he’d been a little greedier he’d have had two by the 13th minute.
David Davis started the move with his tackle to win the ball, and when Maikel Kieftenbeld ran at Forest they back tracked, allowing Kieftenbeld to get a pass off to Adams and he finished it with an angled shot from the left.
“It was a massive win, much needed,” said Carsley, who had a temporary spell in charge himself in between the sacking of Harry Redknapp and the arrival of Cotterill. “It’s plain to see that any kind of win we get is going to be hard fought. We were hanging on a bit at times.
“We’re at the start of something here. There’s been so much going on at the club with managers coming and going that it needs bedding down again.
“It’s probably going to be a long process, but we feel we are getting the players onside now, and beginning to get a structure in place.”
Adams’ second chance for a goal came when Sam Gallagher set up the opportunity with some clever footwork, laying a pass across keeper Jordan Smith’s goal – but Adams couldn’t get a toe on it.
Chances for Kieftenbeld, Gallagher and Jota should have brought more for Cotterill’s men, but even though goal-shy Birmingham City created good chances they had to settle for a one-goal win.