Gardner blooming great in drab draw
NOT even Gary Gardner could make this stalemate blossom.
The Birmingham midfielder was the top performer on a day when graft and resilience ruled over imagination and creativity.
And the only real talking point was how long the home side took at long throws.
Gardner even managed to tuck the ball past Stoke’s Joe Bursik in the dying seconds but the effort was ruled offside.
His team-mates were too often on a different wavelength and that added up to a whole load of nothing at the end of a week which has also been poor on the PR front for the Blues.
How a win would have lightened the mood caused by the building work which forced a crowd figure of just 10,000 at St Andrew’s as season ticket holders were forced to relocate.
The post-match chat was a grumble from Stoke boss Michael O’Neill, who said: “There were lots of long balls and we got dragged into that game. It’s a point gained because it would have been easy to lose.
“We can’t control it but the referee can.
“So we have 30 seconds for every throw-in and then get three minutes at the end.”
But Brum boss Lee Bowyer hit back, saying: “It wasn’t an instruction from me. If you’ve got a centre-half who has got to run or walk to take a throw-in, he can’t keep running. He’s got to have a breather.
“We weren’t playing for a point. I thought it was a fair result.”
BIRMINGHAM: Sarkic 7; Colin 6, Roberts
7, Dean 7, Pedersen 7, Bela 5; Woods 6, Sunjic 6, Gardner 8; Hogan 5 (Aneke (65th)
5), Jutkiewicz 6 (Leko (70th) 5)
STOKE: Bursik 6; Smith 6, Ostigard 7, Souttar 7, Wilmot 6, Tymon 6; Powell 6, Allen 6, Clucas 7; Surridge 6 (Brown (75th)
5), Fletcher 6 (Thompson 90th)
Gary Gardner
G Ward