Here is another article by Russ. He makes a few observations on the completed season and Alex.
I should credit Made in Brum for this article, as I will be taking quotes from the excellent season review, which – importantly – was written before the Fulham home game, so can’t be taken as an ‘excuse for relegation’. Many have cited poor tactics, substitutions, signings, as reasons why ‘McLeish should go’. I wonder if – upon reading these (admittedly well chosen to prove my point!) snippets from key games in our season – some of the McLeish doubters may at least decide to give him a break as the story of our season doesn’t look quite so simply ‘McLeish’s fault’…
“Sunderland away…Blues should have gone on to win the game in the end… Bolton away… Kevin Friend gave the home side a very dodgy penalty. Then, for reasons only known to Kevin Friend, gave a free kick to Bolton, when Ferguson was blatantly sandwiched by two Bolton players and from the free kick Robbie Blake scored… Liverpool home… two fantastic saves from Liverpool goalkeeper Reina saved the visitors…Wigan home… Gardner got his marching orders even though he had clearly won the ball in a sliding challenge… Arsenal away… ultimately undone by a bunch of “cheats” … a dubious penalty is awarded to the cheats, TV later proved that there was no contact… Nasri should have been sent off…Villa away… Blues should have had a penalty when Reo-Coker handled in the area… West Ham home…Blues should have won it late on, but a Jerome strike hit the bar… Tottenham home… Spurs went away lucky to get a point…Wigan away… in the 92nd minute, Wigan got the winner…Wolves home…Gardner gets himself sent off…Newcastle away… Taylor blatantly elbows Jerome right in front of the referee and he does nothing. Later Taylor scores their second. Where’s the justice?”
If any one of those unlucky decisions were reversed, we would have survived. I know it’s easy to say that in retrospect, but I think that article proves just how unlucky we were last season. If we had survived, many Blues fans would have looked at the Wembley win, narrow Quarter Final FA Cup loss, and Premiership survival as our best ever season. Instead, our squad has been dismantled, and McLeish looks to be on borrowed time. I truly hope the Board backs him properly, though sensibly, and we regain our Premiership status at the first attempt. One thing is for sure, we’re going to need better refereeing decisions, and better luck with injuries. Not to mention holding onto our better players. Foster, Doyle and Butland are honour-bound to prove Blues were right to release Maik Taylor too.
I’ve got my season ticket for next year ordered, and I’m looking forward to the new season more and more each day. Keep Right On. We’ve had Wembley Joy, Relegation Sorrow. It’s time for Joy again.
I’m sure Sunderland are thinking ‘Birmingham home 2-0 up should be 3 points’
West Ham will be thinking ‘Birmingham away 2-0 up should be 3 points’
Stoke will be thinking ‘Birmingham away 0-0 going in to stoppage time…should be a good point here’
Man Utd ‘Birmingham away 1-0 up, should be a good three points, oh wtf is the ref and linesman doing!!’
We have been unlucky but it works both ways, we’ve gained points we shouldn’t have done and lost points we shouldn’t have done…
yes i agree with all that bad luck which to be fair we had in abundance the previous season. The reason we went down was lack of goal scoring opportunities and of course goals. It is going to be a tough old season with West Ham, Blackpool, Nottingham Forest, Reading Etc.. to name but a few but yes we do need to keep our talismans KRO
Every team has similar bad luck that would leave relegation being around the 50 point mark. You must also take away the lucky points we gained like the 3 points v Chelsea. The table doesn’t lie, we deserved to be relegated and there is only one man rsponsible. How come we can attack teams quite well when we are behind and always seemed to end up with the players and formations at the end of a game that we should have started with. McLeish is just a more cautious Steve Bruce as our goals for column for the last three years will testify to.
I think luck does come into it. 2 penalties in 38 games! The average across all leagues is around 5 for the same pro-rata period… handball in the box against Man U at home, Foul in 90th Minute at 1-1 away at Wigan. Maybe those 2 instances alone is the 2 points that could have saved us. Never mind though, whats done is done! Its no fun aiming to finish in the top 10 of a league that the board can’t compete in. Lets try and win the championship for the fans next season and score a few goals! KRO
I can see youre point’s and agree with them all in a way.But remember in this sprt as well as all others ” YOU MAKE YOURE OWN LUCK”.
Shoot and you might just maybe score read the stats they don’t lie.
Mcleish is not unlucky ( other than being ginger ) he is negative and incapable of change our chance to be rid as gone.
Time and time agian when we were short of fit players the young guns were ingnored I for one would have rather gone down watching our future and not our past.
My word we do have more than our fair share of whingers.Have they been taking lessons from the great man himself,Arsene.
I agree about Bolton way but that’s it. In most of the other games mentioned we were awful and didn’t deserve anything.
Luck would come into it apart from the fact of the Opta stats. We had least corners, least shots on goal, second least tackles, second least short passes in the final third, etc etc etc.
We would be unlucky if we had been relegated and some of the stats showed we were better than most at passing/shooting/being fouled etc. But we weren;t. We deserved to go down.
What about the injuries we’ve had?
Do you not think our “goals scored” would have been higher if Zigic or Martins had started a game since the Cup win? If McFadden, one of our more creative (albeit frustrating) players had played a game since September?
Would our goal difference not have been better if Dann had played since Christmas?
Everyone gets injuries but we have a lot of long term absentees this season and this, more than ANY other reason is why we have been relegated.
Some great comments cheers. I don’t think for one minute that we didn’t “deserve” to go down. The facts speak for themselves. I just felt some of McLeish’s detractors were making it far too simple for their argument. He’s negative, so we got relegated. The Wembley final alone proved he can do more than just negative, but he had Martins and Zigic fit. When your arguably best defender is injured, you need to be more defensive with the midfield. When your best strikers are injured, and Jerome’s critics won’t deny Zigic and Martins were our first choice attack, you can’t be too attack minded! I do think McLeish has faults, I just wanted to give people food for thought. Sure we had our own small share of fortune, but if we take loan signing performance to one side, we must all be able to see the purchase of Zigic and EVERY loan signing was with a view to making us a more attacking side. It didn’t work out. I think we all welcomed the likes of Hleb derbyshire and bentley. Is it truly McLeish’s fault they didn’t match our own expectation? Some would say yes, that Montgomery was a scapegoat. Yet injuries were also a factor, especially to Hleb Zigic and Martins. Not one of us would blame McLeish, perhaps pointing the finger at the medical team. Surely the medical and scouting team are teams McLeish has to delegate to, and trust in. The Board obviously felt, and supposedly Alex agreed, that the Chief scout had let us down. It is my firm belief that the remaining players, the Board AND the Manager now owe us promotion. Keep Right On.
One point out of eighteen says it all. Who would buy a striker slower than my nan. Tall and slim but Oh so slow. We need a new dynamic manager AM had us for three years with two relegations. I feel we will struggle in Championship unless we keep all players. They owe it to us to get us back up. They got us relegated. If were not in top three by Xmas then get rid.
Okay we had some bad luck , but so do most teams. Make no mistake , we are now where we belong , and so is McLeish!
I’m going to find it very difficult indeed next season watching us win a few , draw a few , lose a few more , as we settle DOWN in our ‘new home’ for the foreseeable.
Eventually McLeish will shuffle out of St Andrews , to pastures new , and we’ll have to pick up the pieces again , and so it gos on.
This particular relegation ( I’ve seen 9 !… ) has a different feel about it. I can’t put my finger on it , but I really fear for the long term this time.
Everton had tons of injuries this season. Strangley, they still played attractive(ish) football.
I just think McLeish needs to find a dynamic new attacking coach. IS it Watson or Grant who is in charge of our “attcking” play?
I think the injuries to key players cost us this time. I am convinced we would not have gone down with Dann, Martins and Zigic fit. However, what is done is done. I have to agree with TR7 I’m afraid; I really don’t feel confident about the coming season. We must make sure we don’t drop straight through for a start. It depends on whom we retain and whom we bring in but we need players with pace, pace and more pace whatever happens especially in the wide positions otherwise it is going to be a very bleak season. 🙁
You went down because you were the third worst team. Stop feeling sorry for yourselves. You were not hard done by. If you take that attitude into next season then you have no chance of coming straight back up.
Scoring late = not unlucky. Exactly the same as scoring in the 52nd minute. Still counts as 1 goal
Hitting post/bar = not unlucky. Just means the shot wasn’t accurate enough.
Only 2 penalties all season = not unlucky. If we spent more time in the opposition penalty areas, statistically we would get more penalties. Other teams got dodgy penalties against us because they spent more time in our penalty area
Keeper playing a blinder = not unlucky. It’s his job. We don’t say we’re unlucky if a striker scores a hat trick against us.
Injuries = not unlucky. Sign healthy players. Have decent back-up. Play youth-team prospects where possible. Every team gets injuries to key players, it’s how they adapt to this setback that is one of the tests of a manager.
If you GENUINELY think we went down last season because of bad luck then you haven’t been paying attention.
You cannot reverse ANY of our decisions to create a table that “fairly” makes us survive without reversing decisions for other teams too.
For those of us that actually watched us this year or at least paid attention whilst there, McLeish’s formations were the most cause of frustration. Why, for example, do you play 4-5-1 with a striker who is weak in that formation (and expect to get goals) when you’re fielding a team who performed so well the previous year at 4-4-2? Why was this season such a change on last year’s success when it simply could have been a fine tune of something that was proven to work.
I think if you have the privilege of writing articles you should apply a little more realism into what you write.
I don’t buy the “bad luck, bad decisions, too many injuries” stuff. Truth is that most teams could to some degree or other say similar things. Bottom line is we didn’t put the ball in the back of the net enough AND for much of the season did not try hard enough to do so. Steve’s point about the prevalance of 4-5-1 this year as compared with 4-4-2 last year is bang on: Too much 4-5-1 = no goals = not enough points = relegation. Much as i hate being relegated (& over several decades i too have seen a lot of them for Blues too) it is v hard to say that it was not deserved this year. If it hadn’t been us it may have been Wolves – but given some of their results this season especially recently away, can we really say we were better than them and just unlucky? We certainly couldn’t beat them, didn’t do so in 2 games, and scored less than they did in those in 2 games.
Like TR7 i am seriously worried about the season ahead – unlike our last time in the Championship, we have already lost a v large part of the squad, some more will be sold for sure, there seem possibly to be issues about the depth of the shareholder’s pockets, and the Championship looks likely to be a seriously tough proposition next season, much tougher than last time Blues were in it. We aren’t going to win it without scoring goals, and we certainly aren’t going to win it (or come second) with the same strategy as we saw all too often this year, and i have no confidence in Eck changing either of those things. I hope i am wrong, but i have a feeling our next season in the prem may be away in the future some where, longer than 12 months. Despite all that, KRO, always.
I would agree that we did not get the refereeing decisions over the season balancing out.
The problem is we have had a negative style of play and officials tend to favour attacking sides and/or ‘big’ teams. We are neither. In addition if the other side match after match keep placing you under more pressure in your half than you do in theirs then they are more likely to get a poor decision than you are. Your defenders are more likely to make errors and the opposition are more likely to get the breaks.
The one player we had who would have a go whenever the chance presented itself was Craig Gardner. Guess who was our top scorer by a street…
Last time we got promoted it was inspite of our style of play and that season we had an inbalance of poor decisions against us.
The fans I know who don’t go or go occasionally all give as a prime reason the lack of adventure we show time and time again. Personally I am more reluctant to go to away matches when we park the bus and our first consideration that we may have to try and get a goal is when the other side score.
Perhaps it was summed up by a Wolves fan who I met a week after we went down who remarked he had spoken to several Blues fans all of whom had taken the view that we deserved to go down because of our style of play.
Opta stats
Fewest Premier League goals 37, fewest shots 314, fewest shots on target 121 equal worse shot accuracy 39%
Most saves in League Ben Foster 169
Birmingham played just 14 defence-splitting through balls all season, fewer than any other side
Birmingham City were the only team not to benefit from the opposition scoring an own goal in the Premier League this season
When we did play a genuinely skilful and fast striker in the Premier League in 2009/10 albeit one who had problems scoring himself
Christian Benitez
21 league matches started, won 11 drew 7 lost 3.
17 games as sub or not in squad, won 2 drew 4 lost 11
I think the ‘ realists ‘ amongst us can safely agree on the reason why we are now a Championship team.
It wasn’t bad luck , it wasn’t referee decisions going against us etc , it WAS however , our tactics !Is McLeish going to radically change those ( ill fated ) tactics ?……
I think not !
I’ve said this before , so I won’t go on , but basically we needed a result at Tottenham , and low and behold , McLeish went for a God damn draw !… a bloody draw !……….We were staring Championship oblivion square in the face and he tried to DEFEND our way out of it !
That is the action of a mad man .
I promise you , he will attempt to f*****g defend his way out of the second division next season with the ‘ St andrews Fortress ‘ scenario that he holds so dear .
It will be grim , it will be dull , and it will spell failure !
He HAS to go.
TR7 – I just found this comment. Are you happy now? Is McLeish trying to defend Villa’s way out of the Premiership? He’s already found a way out of the Carling Cup so he can defend the ‘bread and butter’ of the league….
KRO
PS – Are we all happier with Hughton? 🙂