BENCH TO SAVE THE POTTERS
Fletcher. It was Fletcher who sent an effort curling narrowly wide from 25 yards – clipping the post holding the net up at the back and bouncing along the back of goal – after Morgan Fox had carried the ball forward a long way from central defence.
It was Fletcher, too, who hit the angle of post and bar with a whipped free-kick.
And it was Fletcher who produced a neat slide rule pass to pick out Sam Clucas making a diagonal run behind the Birmingham defence.
It was only a poor touch then from Clucas which gave Neil Etheridge a chance to rush out and smother, with Clucas’s subsequent scream of frustration probably heard in Heron Cross.
And right at the end of the first half, Clucas sent a neat free-kick in from wide on the right for Harry Souttar to knock back across goal and Lee Gregory steam in looking to nod into the net for what would have been his fourth goal in four league games.
Instead, his header went high and he went crashing into the post, needing treatment as he made his way back down the tunnel.
The action was right under the crossbar at the other end at the start of the second half.
Lukas Jutkiewicz had to be alert to stop a James Chester header on the line from a Clucas corner after a decent Stoke break, even if Gregory
went left when Fletcher seemed free and advancing into the box to his right.
The subsequent corner was teasing too as Clucas tried to pick out Souttar. It took George Friend at full stretch to get in ahead of the big defender.
But while Birmingham defended well, Stoke were
becoming increasingly frustrated and there was a fear that the visitors might just test their concentration.
So it proved a couple of times. First Chester was in the book for lolloping in to Jon Toral on a counterattack.
Then came a Birmingham corner which Stoke
just couldn’t defend.
Ivan Sanchez floated in a cross and Dean out-jumped Chester to send a header crashing into the top left corner beyond Davies’s reach.
O’neill threw on Nick Powell and Tyrese Campbell in search of an equaliser and the two, who had needed to
be assessed after they were substituted at Villa, made all the difference, even if for a while it looked like Stoke were thumping their heads into a brick wall.
Campbell twice made incisive runs down the inside right and from the second he pulled back for Powell to pass into the bottom corner,
helped along the way by Dean.
Stoke couldn’t muster another big chance to try to find a winner as Birmingham defended deep and in numbers.
But Birmingham won’t be the last team to do that this season and Stoke have to find a solution.
BURGESS:
CONLON:
WORRALL:
CULLEN:
RODNEY: 5 5
SUBS:
ROBINSON (Cullen 61) Not much of a sight of goal but close to connecting with Whitehead’s cross............ 5 AMOO (Rodney, 77) Beat his man and showed flashes of what he can do, but there was little space for him against a home side working in numbers to protect their lead.. 5.5
(Burgess, 74) Busy when he came on. Likely to get a longer run out in the Trophy on Tuesday........... 5.5 Not used: Crookes, Pope, Montano, Visser. MORECAMBE: Turner, Cooney, Lavelle, Davis, Gibson (Mellor, 88), Wildig, Kenyon, O’sullivan, Phillips (Songo’o, 80), Mendes Gomes (Mcalinden, 54), Stockton. Subs: Knight Percival, Da Silva Mendes, Leitch-smith, Pringle.