Blues are at eye of a PERFECT STORM!
I’LL admit it, I don’t really know where to start. Much like the 3,500 Blues fans who directed their ire at everyone from the owners, to the board, to the manager, to the players – it’s very difficult to know what to make of the heaviest defeat of Lee Bowyer’s tenure.
Pick your target, there was plenty of mud available to sling in whichever direction you want during a palsied 90 minutes at Bloomfield Road. This was a day when a perfect storm raged on the sunny Blackpool seaside.
The owners, with their clueless approach to running a football club, played their part in this. In turning the investment tap on for Harry Redknapp, off for Garry Monk, back on for Aitor Karanka and virtually off for Bowyer, they have overseen an uneven approach to squad building.
They have listened to the wrong people, recruited abysmally and have seemingly achieved the impossible of allowing the squad to both stagnate and churn through the scores of incorrect signings.
Make no mistake, if they want their football club to survive in this league next season – whether it’s under Bowyer’s stewardship or someone else’s – they have to provide the finance to upgrade this group.
Bowyer, if it is him, and Craig Gardner, need resources to shore things up. But it won’t be easy, the ghost of FFP hangs over St Andrew’s as onerous contracts handed out by Xuandong Ren continue to make life difficult a year after his departure.
As things stand, Blues will go into next season with three strikers aged over 30, ageing defenders and lacking depth at goalkeeper. There might just about be enough midfielders to fashion something decent but every other department needs improving otherwise days such as Monday’s 6-1 humiliation at Blackpool are going to recur, as they have done for years.
Bowyer has found that to his cost in recent weeks – and particularly during an Easter period that might have done for many of his predecessors.
The head coach has struggled to find a winning formula all season and his claims at progress ring hollow, even on a day when Barnsley’s defeat to Peterborough ensured Blues’ Championship status.
Disaffection with his back three/five has been bubbling away for weeks and it came to the surface as the left side of Blues’ defence resembled a turnstile.
Onel Hernandez defended so poorly at wing-back Bowyer had no option but to change the system 20 minutes in, by which time the visitors were already 2-0 down. The Cuban seemed far more effective when moved further forward.
Yet the total collapse, the disintegration, that’s not about 3-5-2, 4-diamond-2 or 4-3-3, that’s about players not showing the bottle their fabulous travelling supporters deserve. It really doesn’t matter what formation you deploy.
Maybe they are shellshocked, worn down by too many relegation scraps, battle fatigued. Maybe they know they’re safe and could coast by the coast. Maybe they knew the wing-back system wasn’t going to work from the outset, but that doesn’t mean you don’t do your best to make it work.
There will be more than 17,000 Blues fans at St Andrew’s against Millwall on Saturday and a repeat of this will not be tolerated. Everyone connected with Birmingham City has to up their game.
Bowyer says the fans had ‘‘every right’’ to lambast his side after their humiliation at Blackpool.
The players were barracked throughout the game with several renditions of ‘‘you’re not fit to wear the shirt’’ leaving no-one in any doubt about the paucity of the performance.
“That’s the darkest day I have experienced in my whole football career,” said Bowyer. “That was not acceptable from start to finish.
“I would never associate myself with quitting and failing in that way. I am in charge here. I pick the team, pick the shape, but that had nothing to do with the result. There was no fight, no passion, no desire. There are so many things that are wrong with what is going on but there is no excuse for coming second best all over the pitch.”