Saturday, August 05, 2006

Birmingham City 2-1 Colchester United


As many of you may know today was first day of the football season for most of the Coca-Cola Football League Championship teams. So as a Birmingham City fan I thought that since I had seen Birmingham City’s first game in the Premiership I should go and see the first game in our first (hopefully only) season outside of the top league of English football.


My last trip to St Andrews to see a competitive match was back in September, 2002 when I went to watch Birmingham City loose 3-0 to Newcastle United. The last time I was at St Andrews was in May, 2005 when I went to watch Birmingham City take on a Capital Gold Celebrity XI.


This event was very different from my past two experiences. Birmingham City who started with Taylor in goal, Kelly, N'Gotty, Tebily, Sadler in defence, Danns, Johnson, Clemence, Dunn in midfield and Forssell and Campbell up front got off to an edgy start. Colchester didn’t shy away and defend they attacked Birmingham City and at times put Birmingham City under great pressure. From what I saw I think Steve Bruce is seriously going to have to consider if the midfield Birmingham City started with worked at all.


The pressure was somewhat lifted when Dudley Campbell scored for Birmingham City after thirty minutes when he headed in from a cross by Bruno N'Gotty, however soon after the halftime break Colchester United equalized when Richard Garcia scored.


I think it was the Colchester United goal which forced Steve Bruce to make changes and so Clemence was replaced by Bendtner and Campbell came off for Larsson however not much changed. Bruce then made another substitution when he took of Forssell and bought on Jerome. Unfortunately Jerome didn’t last long as he was sent off less then five minutes after coming on for lashing out at Karl Duguid. After Jerome’s sending off Colchester put Birmingham City under great pressure but Bendtner who is on loan from Arsenal scored the winner for Birmingham when he scored with just eleven minutes to spare.


I thought the result was very harsh on Colchester United who were by far the better team on the day and I hope that players like Johnson, Clemence and Dunn who all had a bad game either re-gain their full fitness (which could have affected thier games) or improve their game before they are allowed to start again.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home