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Match Report
November 25th 2006
Burnley 1 Birmingham City 2.
“Well this is it,” you think on the way to the game, if not for two or three days beforehand as well. Recover from Cardiff and West Brom? Get back on track? Compete with one of the big boys? Get a result? Show that we deserve to be up there in the lofty top six? Show that we can do it? I refuse to believe yet that we can’t.
The squad of 20 versus the squad of 28; the wage bill of £4m versus the wage bill we are told of £21m. The minnows who live on director loans versus the team with the parachute payment, and have two players who cost more than our entire squad. The team with the three Arsenal loanees, one of whom Bendtner, only 19, and outstanding, will decide the course of the game. It’s an unfair world.
The day is cold, the wind swirling, behind the Cricket Field Stand one of those blood red skies with dark black clouds. Litter, crisp bags, carriers sail through the air and swirl across the pitch along with expectation and hope.
And within minutes the dream start: Birmingham well and truly caught cold with a lovely cross from Foster put away by McCann coming in on the blind side with barely a Birmingham player to be seen, a class goal.
Too good to be true: you bet.
For much of the first half you think God are these two sides really second and fourth the game is so mediocre. This is not a sumptuous feast of football it is bread and dripping. Birmingham are poor, limited, save for swift McSheffrey breaks down the right, a cross comes over, what should be a certain goal chance is wasted and comes to an embarrassing nothing. But McSheffrey has shown why he cost £4m (our annual wage budget) with his pace and awareness. For much of the game he is their main threat and shows why many Coventry fans were so outraged when he was sold. Another cross from him results in the equaliser.
Birmingham are poor save for occasional swift breaks and then the quickness of thought of one player they have, who puts away without a second thought, the ball that comes his way via one of those ping pong comedy routines in the Burnley 6 yard box that we have seen before. It all happens so fast it’s hard to see which hapless defenders are involved. Was it Duff who cleared the ball, did it hit Harley, then ricochet around at 100mph. But it’s a weird and whacky goal which goes the way of the side in luck, the one on whom fortune smiles, as if the football gods have chosen them for promotion long before the season’s end. Bendtner scores it, big, strong, powerful, a player who can score a goal in a split second, when it finally zig zags to him. From that moment on you think, ah well, that’s it, you can’t see Burnley scoring twice. Jones has two great chances, Gray a tame header, that’s our lot until half time. We pass the ball to Birmingham as often as to ourselves. Jensen has this regular knack of kicking a deadball straight out of play. There is the characteristic bunching by the touchline of every player on the pitch from other goalkicks. One Burnley player one day might peel off into the wide open space on the other side of the pitch and Jensen might find him with a surprise kick. We live in hope.
Here’s another little cameo. It’s a Birmingham corner. Their two enormous centre backs play the safety first game and stay in the centre circle to snuff out any Burnley break. Our man Jones stays upfield ready for a quick clearance and a quick break. He is in a wide unmarked position… so far so good… then he ambles into the centre circle and stands next to the two Birmingham centre backs. Dear God why? Our little band of spectators all look at each other, baffled. So this is modern football? At the PNE game I sat with the famous Dave Thomas. He couldn’t believe some of the stuff that he watched and the poverty of ideas.
The second half more football, more passion, more intent, the wind growing stronger, the temperature dropping further. One notices more and more how the referee favours the ‘big’ side, the ‘name’ side. Gray is forever penalised. Yet his market Jaidi, a huge and lumbering but effective player acquired from Bolton Wanderers has his arms round Gray, or is holding him down by his shoulder in almost every single encounter. No free kick given. Gray sneezes. Free kick against Gray.
Gifton is in his own lumbering, I-need-a-hot-water-bottle-to-get-me-moving mode, yet he is our only forward who can win the headers, Jones largely ineffective on the right; his best games have been on the left. McCann is favoured over Elliot. Negativity in a home game? Only Steve Cotterill knows if that is true. McCann has scored tis true, but after that offers little threat.
For 15 minutes or so in the second half, out of nothing, comes a deafening, sustained Claret and Blue Army chant. Who starts these things? It involves three sides of the ground. Long, loud and passionate; willing Burnley to take the game by the throat. It lifts the hairs on the back of your neck. Such things are at the heart of football. The crowd know that Birmingham can be beaten, they have hardly troubled Jensen; he hasn’t had a shot to save, their goal has been a joke. The chant gets no reward. You will a goal to go in so that you can say WE scored that goal.
1 – 1 seems a certainty but then Bendtner decides otherwise. Suddenly he is in the box. With impunity he finds space, skates closer to goal, drills a hard low cross through three, static, ineffective Burnley defenders, possibly Jensen is unsighted but it goes straight through his hands and there is sub DJ Campbell to bundle it in. Campbell has been on the pitch approximately one minute. Christmas has come early to Birmingham. For some reason Jensen chases the referee and berates him, then quickly stops. Jensen gets the blame on Claretsmad but the poverty of the Burnley defending has lead up to it. You know at this moment the game is over. Four of us groan in unison, feel colder; shiver more, the exodus home starts as a dribble, then gains momentum. The Claret and Blue Army chant is dead. Duff is pronounced MOTM, rightly so, Harley wasn’t far behind. Gray deserves a medal for not capitulating to the crafty Jaidi who has got away Scot free all afternoon with his impression of an octopus with legs and arms wrapped around, and holding down, anything that moves.
Meanwhile Lafferty has come on for Gifton. Lafferty is young, tall, gangly, quick, and keen, but not a patch on Bendtner. Lafferty’s, or was it Gray’s, shot looks like it will slowly cross the line but a defender clears it from under the bar. Experts sitting behind the goal report on Claretsmad, that it was golden chance missed with a tame shot. We can vouch from our own seats that it did not cross the line. In the second half did we have a shot other than this? Even so a draw would have been the fair result. It seems a travesty that Birmingham are at home now with all three points. You curse them, you moan at their goals, the first a classic, a candidate for a Billy Pearce pantomime routine at the Alhambra Theatre, Bradford, this Christmas; the second a charity donation, courtesy of miserable defending. What else did they do? Bugger all. They must be laughing all the way back home.
A few hours later I don’t feel disheartened, dejected or miserable. I feel miffed, annoyed, irritated, even angry that we have got nothing from this game, that a team who have such ‘big’ players, so much money, can do so little and take the points; a game where we matched them for the whole of the 90 minutes. It has been the third of three games that it seemed reasonable to assume points would be hard to come by. But we are still fifth… just.
The game against Birmingham was never about being a crunch game. Yes we matched them for ninety minutes but was that because we were good or because they were mediocre. The latter I fear. Tuesday against Leeds United certainly is. Lose that, and the bubble is well and truly burst and goodbye top six.
The attendance: not even 13,000 for second against fourth. Next year seems another certainty for yet more director loans, but as one of them said to me last week: “I won’t be doing this forever.”
Long term you can only wonder… where is this club heading?
Dave Thomas November 25th 2006
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