February 21st • 33/46 • 1-2 (L)
Well, the run of results had to come to an end at some point.
I missed the FA Cup game against West Brom as I was in Yorkshire for my sister's birthday, and was hoping for a bit of revenge against Birmingham following our 4-1 loss to them a few months ago in Clement's first game in charge. Unfortunately, we were pretty bad in the first half, and after conceding twice in the first 15 minutes it felt like it was going to be a long afternoon and potentially a hammering. For whatever reason we just weren't at it, there was no cohesion and things felt slow and disjointed, nothing like we've seen in recent weeks, but we managed to get to half time still in it.
We started the second half a lot better, the first five minutes especially were very intense. Kenny tucked away a nice shot for what was apparently his first goal in two years, and really we should have at least got a point out of the game, but it wasn't to be.
I don't like using this as an excuse, but the officials were terrible today, and it wasn't helped by classic unsportsmanlike play from Birmingham either. They were pulling shirts and pushing us down all game, and there was only a single yellow for totting up to show for it. The linesman on our side was woeful, with what looked like an offside for their second (although in fairness it looked quite tight watching it back but does look offside), and Kenny went and had a surprisingly stern word with him afterwards with a lot of finger pointing which was causing everyone around me to worry he was going to get carded, but he even flagged our own back line as offside in the first half as he seemed to lose track of which way we were playing. Given how agitated my entire stand seemed to be, not just annoyed but completely bemused, and with even the City Stand singing "you're not fit to referee" and "shit referee, shit referee", it's probably reasonable to say they had a bit of a shocker. We also had what looked like a clear penalty waved away. They had players sitting down "injured" on more than one occasion, for just long enough to have a little team talk before their miraculous recovery - this really needs to be stamped out of the game, and it was frustrating to say the least when one of their players went down with what appeared to be cramp and the ref stopped play despite us being on the break. Couple that with classic time wasting taking 10 seconds drying the ball for every throw and their keeper standing around thinking about what he was going to have for his tea instead of taking goal kicks, and it was a frustrating afternoon all round. The fact that I've seen some Birmingham fans online saying the ref and linesmen were in our pocket begs belief, but I guess sometimes it really is about perspective. To give their fans some credit, they were loud the whole game, and while they rolled out the same chant they sang at theirs about not being able to read or write but we can drive a tractor, several people around me made a comment in response that at least we get our bins collected, which made me chuckle.
Questionable officiating and cheating aside, Birmingham were just better, and as Liam Manning would say, it's one of those. We can't win 'em all. The midweek game against Sheffield Wednesday (on Wednesday) and Leicester at the weekend will be huge in our push to avoid the drop, which I think we're already safe from at this point given how badly teams below us are doing, but 6 points from these next games should put any lingering relegation concerns to bed.