Nobody except Blues can fix their season
AN escape route out of the Championship’s bottom three remains tantalisingly visible for Birmingham City.
Barnsley, Burton, Bolton and Sunderland continue to lose, Blues are just three points – one win, a single game – from leaping up the table and giving themselves a measure of hope.
But none of that group are struggling more than Blues – a team who find goalscoring so unfathomably difficult. It’s why they aren’t marching merrily along that escape route, it could be why they fail to take it altogether.
In his post-match press conference on Boxing Day, following defeat to Norwich at Andrew’s, manager Steve Cotterill painted a picture of how that shortcoming is affecting every match.
If they go a goal down – as they have done in seven of his games – it’s often a hammer blow. One single defensive error and the game seems up.
Only once have they equalised – and even then QPR went on to add another the St 2-0 and leave St Andrew’s with their first away win in ten months. A year of losing has left them psychologically fragile – and that is not easily solved. That demands tactical caution, which in turn makes it harder to score, which in turn erodes confidence, which also has a deleterious affect on their prospects of getting off the mark. It’s a self-fulfilling cycle of doubt. And so it was on Boxing Day. Blues were reasonably stable for half-an-hour, until Alex Pritchard put the visitors 1-0 up, then the belief drained out of the home players.
But for goalkeeper David Stockdale, the Canaries could have been two up at the break. Even when it came to chasing the game and going 4-4-2, the situation didn’t improve. It was the Canaries who flew down the other end of the pitch and added to their total. It was all so reminiscent of previous matches when Blues have been hit with a sucker punch.
Goals win games, they change perceptions, they alter narratives, they affect confidence.
Birmingham City have themselves because no-one to do it for them. to help is going