Thoughts on last night

Always nice to get 3 away points,especially so with the winner coming in injury time.

The first half was hard work. The difference in quality between their & our players was huge and obvious to see but we just weren’t getting anywhere in an attacking sense – all very pedestrian, slow and too comfortable for the Birmingham defence.

None of the players who started had the nous to break down a dug in defence. Birmingham actually looked more dangerous with their counters than us I thought. I’m not convinced by Sinani, Dowell and Ramsey. Not all together, anyway. They may be fine individually with others but as a three they really struggled to create anything. Given the last two games and the difference that the substitutions made you’d hope that Smith realises that adjustments are needed to the starting 11’s.

Defence on the whole looked pretty solid, although I couldn’t really see what happened in the lead up to their goal. It helped that Birmingham didn’t really press us that much/very well. Having said that we still managed to get ourselves in a few pickles and Krul gave me a few minor heart attacks, faffing about with it, determined to play out from the back. Sometimes you just need to hoof it down field!

Shout out for Kenny who worked really hard and was organising well. You can see also he’s the most vocal and main encourager amongst the team

I was loving the south American flair. Nunez loves a quick flick with the outside of his boot and turn and his vision and execution of a long pass is pretty impressive. Doesn’t mind getting stuck in either and isn’t it great to have a quality free kick taker in the side again? He was clumsy in possession on a few occasions but he’s just going to get better and better and looks a really astute buy. Sara showed some lovely flashes too, albeit was maybe trying a little too hard to impress on a couple of occasions, but that’s understandable given his delayed star to his career here.

Onel was just on fire. He absolutely terrorised their right back, I almost began to feel sorry for the bloke as he time and time again was skinned right in front of us. Pukki’s movement and speed just caused havoc amongst them – he’s such a clever player – more so than I’d probably noticed before when he was ‘just’ banging in the goals for us. If Smith can some how work out the best personnel and formation to get the front clicking then the very large majority of teams in this division are really going to struggle against us.

Big old away following too, largely in good voice. Birmingham’s support was pretty pitiful both in numbers and noise, apart from a handful of gobby lads at the top of the stand nearest to us. Amazing how riled by them some of our fans seemed to get!

All in all a welcome 3 points and the feeling that there is still a lot more to come from this squad. Fingers crossed.

Posted By: Azteca, Aug 31, 11:27:01