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If you do those three things then we guarantee we’ll get back to you. And if you’ve got what we’re looking for then we might be able to set you up with a team blog here on The Offside.

First Birmingham stole Barry Ferguson from Rangers recently. The manager Alex McLeish said” For me Barry is a midfielder at his peak. I don’t think 31 is too old for a central midfielder of great experience.

“Players like Gordon Strachan and Gary McAllister continued playing into their late 30s and these were guys who were not afraid of the ball. I think Barry can play on for a good few years yet.

“He’s a guy that always turned up for work. By that I mean that his appearances over the years have always been fantastic.

“Barry has got the culture of the true-grit Brit, who will go through brick walls to play football. He has a winning mentality, and that is proven by all the winners medals he’s won.”

It’s a great pickup for the guys, Ferguson has played in the EPL before going to Scotland, turning out for Blackburn until 2003. I think now that he’s played for a top club, he can teach some of these guys for the Blues who haven’t had the chance to. Also all the talent that the Blues can collect the better chances they have to stay up.

From Alex“I think we’ve deserved it over the season. We’ve ground results out when we’ve needed to and I think it’s been over-talked that we’re not a good team.

“I know there are a lot of great teams in the Championship who have been in the Premier League and struggled to get back up and the fight to get up makes it probably the most difficult divisions possibly in the world and I don’t say that lightly.

So how’s our man of the week going to celebrate this?

“I’ll definitely have a little glass of wine or champagne to celebrate before I get back home but after that I think it’ll probably be a case of getting on that settee and sleep for a week!”

From the Manager

(bcfc.com)

“It was a hard couple of days after Preston where we had to stew on it but I’ve been through highs and lows in football.

I know the euphoria of winning and I know that if you lose such a top level game how disappointing that can be but mostly I’ve had highs in this professional sport of ours but when I get knocked down I’m pretty good at getting back up.

We’ve emphasised that to the players this week that throughout their careers they’ve got to bounce back and show their characters and guts.

From the Gaffer“We spoke to the players on Monday and quickly told them about the disappointment of being a professional sportsman at times and that it was about bouncing back,” said the Blues boss.

“They’ve done that many times this season and have shown great resilience and steel and other managers have even commented that there’s something about Birmingham in that they keep going right to the very end.

“Now we’ve taken it to the very last game that’s what we must do and I want the players to go and play with freedom in their minds.

“Other people outside the club will say possibly ‘Birmingham must be down now’, but if we’d had a bad start in the season and then won ten games in a row to get to this point it would be a different mindset, but it’s still exactly the same situation.

“We’re ahead by one point and that situation doesn’t change.”

Watford: Loach, Mariappa, DeMerit, Williamson, Doyley, Cork, Jenkins, Rose (Harley 59), McAnuff, Smith, Hoskins (Rasiak 46).
Subs Not Used: Lee, Cauna, Stepanov.

Birmingham: Doyle, Carr, Jaidi, Queudrue (Traore 84), Murphy, Bowyer, Larsson (Phillips 64), Johnson, Fahey, O’Connor (Jerome 70), McFadden.
Subs Not Used: Lyness, Bouazza.

Goals: Jerome 73.

Att: 16,180

Ref: Tony Bates (Staffordshire).

From the Gaffer *From the official club site*

“Watford were always going to be a tough nut to crack but we started with the right approach and had it not been for some tremendous saves from the keeper we’d have gone in ahead at the break.

“After the interval the home side came back at us but we defended resolutely and what shone through, and what I’m extremely proud of, was how we dealt with the pressure. We kept calm heads, kept working hard and Cameron’s goal won it for us.”

“As I’ve said, I’m extremely proud of the performance and result today but we put that behind us now and concentrate entirely on preparing the players for the Preston game.

“Hopefully St. Andrew’s will be full and be rocking like it was when we played Wolves recently and we can go out there and put in an equally impressive display.

“We may not necessarily need to win our last two games but make no mistake about it that is our aim. We have to fully focus on picking up our results and not worry about what’s going on elsewhere – and that’s what we intend to do.”

Elliot, Butterfield, Ward, Hudson, Youga, Sam (Ambrose 90), Racon (Dickson 79), Zhi, Bailey, Shelvey, Kandol.
Subs Not Used: Randolph, Holland, Burton.

Booked: Bailey.

Birmingham: Maik Taylor, Carr, Jaidi, Ridgewell, Murphy, Larsson (Phillips 49), Bowyer, Johnson, Fahey, Bouazza (McFadden 65), Jerome (Bent 59).
Subs Not Used: Doyle, Queudrue.

Booked: Murphy, Jaidi.

Att: 20,022

Ref: Lee Probert (Wiltshire).

Well it’s always good to get points, and move up. Though I would have liked to get the full out of this match. I mean, for shame Birmingham this should have been the three pointer we needed. Charlton is the bottom of the Championship. We have more than half the total points that they have. And we only got 1 point out of them. Not funny. This needs to be worked on.

From the Gaffer

Birmingham boss Alex McLeish:
“It’s in our hands. I’m challenging the players to win all our games. We’ve got to believe we can and have a strong mentality.

“Sheffield United have hard games, the same as us. Nobody has an easy game.

“But it comes down to temperament and how much the players want it because there is nothing between the teams.”

Birmingham: Maik Taylor, Carr, Jaidi, Ridgewell, Murphy, Larsson (Bouazza 87), Carsley, Bowyer, Fahey, Phillips (McFadden 46), Jerome (O’Connor 57).
Subs Not Used: Doyle, Queudrue.

Sent Off: Carsley (37).

Goals: Jerome 45, O’Connor 69.

Wolverhampton: Hennessey, Foley, Craddock, Berra, Hill (Jarvis 46), Edwards (Vokes 62), Henry, Jones, Stephen Ward, Iwelumo (Keogh 40), Harewood.
Subs Not Used: Higgs, Stearman.

Booked: Henry.

Att: 25,935

Ref: Mark Halsey (Lancashire).

Does this mean that we are better than Wolves? Probably not, but I’ll use a common sport jargon from the States. “Throw the records out the window when these two teams play”. (ok substitute side for team). I don’t think that this will clinch the Championship for us, I still think Wolves have separated themselves from the pack.

Though if they continue to play like they did today, the gap might be erased. That, I don’t think will happen either, there’s just something about Wolves that I can’t put my finger on it. But my compadre Toby sure can.

Let’s just hope that the Blues can keep playing this well, on Saturday against bottom feeders Charlton.

Goals: Jerome 38.

Norwich: Marshall, Otsemobor, Doherty, Shackell, Bertrand, Gow, Clingan, Lappin, Carney, Mooney, Lee.
Subs Not Used: Nelson, Drury, McDonald, Smith, Adeyemi.

Booked: Lee, Marshall.

Goals: Clingan 53.

Att: 18,159

Ref: Mark Haywood (W Yorkshire).

Well another point, but it should have been three points. We need to get more goals, being second isn’t all that bad. It continues my statement of wanting the Blues to go up. After all, would we be as bad as West Brom? Probably not.

From the Gaffer Alex McLeish

“We started too casually and the players forgot what I had told them for recent home games.

“We had a good opportunity to shut the game out but then shot ourselves in the foot giving away a free-kick on the edge of the penalty area.

“We have given away far too many free-kicks away on the edge of the area in recent games and somewhere along the line you are going to get punished, as we were on this occasion. ”

Barnsley (4-4-2): Heinz Muller; Marciano Van Homoet (Mounir El Haimour 83), Darren Moore, Dennis Souza, Rob Kozluk; Daniel Bogdanovic, Bobby Hassell, Hugo Colace, Jamal Campbell-Ryce; Jon Macken (Adam Hammill 77), Michael Mifsud. Unused subs: Luke Steele (gk), Martin Davaney, Maceo Rigters.

Booked: Hassell 43,

Goals: Mifsud 82

Blues (4-4-2): Maik Taylor; Stephen Carr, Martin Taylor, Radhi Jaidi, Franck Queudrue; Sebastian Larsson, Damien Johnson (Scott Sinclair 62), Lee Carsley, Keith Fahey; Carlos Costly (Hameur Bouazza 74), Cameron Jerome. Unused subs: Colin Doyle (gk), Garry O’Connor, Ulises De La Cruz.

Booked: Carr 28, Johnson 40

Goals: Taylor 85

Referee: Graham Horwood

Attendance: 11,299 (564 Blues fans)

All HAIL Martin Taylor! He secures a point for the Blues! So I guess not having as many strikers as we could, didn’t hurt. But I’d still like to see more than point earned folks. I know it’s hard to score, or the final scores would be basketball type. Is it asking for too much to see a 2-1 or a 3-1 scoreline favoring the Blues? Maybe this year.

From The Gaffer
as always it’s from the club’s website:

“”Although we didn’t necessarily have quite as much of a high tempo as our two recent home games we didn’t play badly and I think no-one could have complained had we come away with an even better result than a draw.

“We were organised and defended well so it was a blow to concede in the manner that we did. However no-one was more distraught about what happened as Martin Taylor was.

“But you need character and determination to succeed in this game and Martin refused to let it get to him. Within minutes he was the person reacting quickest in the box following a saved free-kick and he scored a very important goal for us.”