Birmingham City 2-2 Ipswich Town - The Final Word
Article by Rick LopezClick here to follow e-Birmingham City on Twitter!
Optimism was high running into Tuesday’s clash between Birmingham City and Ipswich Town, as the Blues had just come off the back of their first home win in the league in 10 months.
Fielding an unchanged lineup, in a 4-4-2 formation, Lee Clark’s side were looking to make it three wins in a row in front of a crowd of 14,000.
Both sides started the game well, taking it in turns to create chances, with Lee Novak and Paul Anderson going close for Blues and Ipswich respectively.
The first goal of the game came from a Blues corner, David Edgar heading in unmarked, with the defender showing great aerial ability.
Sadly, Ipswich levelled the score after half time with Christophe Berra heading in from a free kick. Poor defending from set pieces seemed to be a theme for both sides.
Ipswich took a hold of the second half, having much more possession and troubling the Blues defence around the 18 yard box.
Against the flow of play, however, Clayton Donaldson made it 2-1 to Blues, showing great pace, running on to a through ball from Wes Thomas and providing an excellent finish.
Blues looked to seal the win by bringing on skipper Paul Robinson to protect against an increasingly desperate Ipswich, who made some attacking substitutions.
Sadly the Blues defence could not hold back the Ipswich attack, and 2 minutes before the end of the game, Christophe Berra converted from an Anderson cross.
The fact that this leveled the scores compounded the outrage felt by many fans, as minutes before this goal, Paul Caddis had been brought down in the Ipswich penalty area, and the referee seemed to be the only person in the whole ground not to think it was a penalty.
To lose 2 points 2 minutes from the end of the game is obviously incredibly annoying, but on the balance of play, I think it was a fair result, and Blues would not have deserved the win.
Ipswich are a better team than Brighton, so there were weaknesses in our team that Lee Clark had not discovered before this game.
For example, our defending from set pieces and crosses in this match was unacceptable. It was at the stage when I was actually nervous when the opposition had a corner, as I was not confident in the Blues defence.
Thankfully, this can be rectified by working on marking, but the players should already be able to do this.
Lee Clark’s tactics in this game were also questionable. Instead of the pass and move, proactive play against Brighton, suddenly Blues were hoofing it up to the strikers and hoping that something would happen.
Although they’re not small, Wes Thomas and Clayton Donaldson are no Nikola Zigic.
Also, they both seem to want to be the striker getting into space, instead of holding up the ball, which meant that Ipswich soon regained possession, and could put pressure on us, instead of the other way around.
And when we did have the ball in midfield, Paul Caddis and David Davis seemed to be increasingly negative in their play, either passing it back or blindly hoofing it forward.
So, what to do against Brentford on Saturday?
Being an away game, and seeing how easily the Blues defence were beaten on Tuesday, I’d expect Blues to revert to 4-2-3-1, just to provide extra cover for the defence.
I still feel that Lee Novak is not providing us with his best play on the left - he’s a striker, not a winger - and he seems reluctant to get the cross into the box, always cutting inside.
If we play Mark Duffy instead, we can get more service to our strikers, and that can only be a good thing.
I wouldn’t be too disheartened about this performance however. Blues are essentially a new team, and they will take time to gel. They will win at home again.
Sooner than 10 months would be nice however...
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