Rowett delighted to be boring!
BIRMINGHAM now have five wins from Gary Rowett’s first eight games in charge, meaning the Blues boss cared little about his side’s contribution to an appalling spectacle.
After last week’s 6-1 mauling of Reading; Rowett’s men failed to repeat their scoring heroics for a second week running in this drab affair.
But after securing all three points; it was the result and not the performance that pleased Rowett.
He said:“It was very different to the other wins, but I think we needed to do that this week. It was full of attacking flair last week, but you always know you're not going to do that again away from home.
“We needed to come and put a hard-working performance in. We're not there to entertain away from home. It's not up to us to make the game.
“We felt at half-time we could sit off and see a 0-0 draw out.We haven't showed that lack of ambition so far. We've always tried to win games.
“The goal came from a moment of brilliance, but our hard work and endeavour certainly earned us the right to come away with some points, whether that was three or one.”
The only noteworthy moment was David Cotterill’s goal. Clayton Donaldson earned a cheap foul from Anthony Gerrard and Cotterill swerved the free-kick over the wall and between Alex Smithies’ hands. As 5-0 losers at Norwich last week, it was understandable Huddersfield wanted to shut the game down and they had the most possession and restricted Birmingham to longdistance shots.
But the Terriers cannot consider themselves unfortunate. They were the minimally superior of two sides mutually undeserving of victory.
The game was a pedestrian midfield battle with no-one able to string forward passes together.
Birmingham were content to defend deep and give Huddersfield’s defence time on the ball, but the Terriers never transferred the ball from back to front effectively.
The liveliest moments were a few speedy surges from Harry Bunn, Sean Scannell or Demarai Gray, but these moments came to nothing.
As the first half came to end Grant Holt had Huddersfield's best chance. The Wigan-loanee capitalised on Scannell’s typically-scuffed shot to be free on goal at the back post, but Darren Randolph reacted quickly to deny him.
The Terriers’ only other threatening moments were in the final minutes, after the belated introduction of different attackers.
Joe Lolley carried more menace in three minutes on the pitch than his teammates had throughout 90 and his curling shot was pushed wide by Randolph.
Huddersfield manager Chris Powell said:“It wasn't an exciting game. We needed to be more compact and stronger, which I got in the main.
“I didn’t want to be as open as we were last week.We needed to make sure we had a foothold in the game, which we certainly did, but the cutting edge wasn't there.
“It’s only natural to look over our shoulders because of the position we're in.
“I don’t think we're a side that should be many places higher, but we’re not in the position we’d like to be.”