Birmingham v Swansea

K

keith margam

Vital Football Legend
Birmingham v Swansea, Sat 20 September, 12:30

Early kick off for this one and an away ticket allocation sell out, well done Jack Army.

Birmingham were League One Champions last season with a record 111 points and an impressive average home attendance of 26,326.

P46 W34 D9 L3 F84 A31 Pts 111

This season’s results so far:

DWWLL P5 W2 D1 L2 F4 A5 Pts7

Birmingham 1 - Ipswich 1 (27,508)

Blackburn 1 - Birmingham 2

Birmingham 1 - Oxford 0 (27,342)

Leicester 2 - Birmingham 0

Stoke 1 - Birmingham 0

Birmingham’s manager is Chris Davies, born in England but played for Wales at U-19 level due to his father being Welsh. In 2010 he worked under Brendan Rodgers at Swansea specialising in opposition analysis and tactics. In his first season Swans were promoted to the PL and they consolidated their position for a second season before he moved with Rodgers to Liverpool, Celtic and Leicester. After that he went to Spurs as assistant to Ange Postecoglou.

Swans fired Michael Duff in Dec 2023 and tried to get their top candidate Chris Davies from Spurs but he turned them down. Luke Williams was then appointed instead. Several months later Birmingham came calling and Davies accepted their offer for his first managerial role and what a fine job he’s done there since.

Swansea will be kicking themselves after conceding in the dying seconds of the Hull match to drop two points with the draw and miss the opportunity to move up to 5th in the table.

Poor defending for both goals conceded. Wide open on the left for the first, with Ronald and Key in no man’s land. Their winger, ex-Cardiff loanee Ryan Giles, in acres of space and left free to run and cross for McBurnie to slide the ball home as Key and Cabango watch on. The second goal was a scramble in the box after a cross was headed back into the mix by an unmarked Hull player.

Puzzling substitutions and tactics were the order of the day. Taking our three best players off and sitting back on the lead, inviting pressure, gave Hull the green light to attack in numbers and there was an inevitable outcome. Hopefully lessons learned.
 
After the impressive win over Forest, new striker Adam Idah says “There's real belief in this changing room, we've all got belief that we can do something.”

 
Today’s line up. Good news, Stamenic is back after injury and slots straight in:

Swans: Lawrence Vigouroux, Josh Key, Ben Cabango (c), Cameron Burgess, Josh Tymon, Marko Stamenic, Goncalo Franco, Ethan Galbraith, Ronald, Zeidane Inoussa, Zan Vipotnik

Subs: Andy Fisher, Melker Widell, Malick Yalcouye, Jisung Eom, Ishe Samuels-Smith, Liam Cullen, Manuel Benson, Kaelan Casey, Adam Idah



Blues: Ryan Allsop, Christoph Klarer (c), Jack Robinson, Paik Seung-ho, Demarai Gray, Alex Cochrane, Tomoki Iwata, Bright Osayi-Samuel, Jay Stansfield, Lewis Koumas, Marvin Ducksch

Subs: James Beadle, Ethan Laird, Phil Neumann, Tommy Doyle, Kyogo Furuhashi, Patrick Roberts, Lyndon Dykes, Eiran Cashin
 
19’ Vipotnik scores, ruled out offside by linesman still running back and not in line with play. Not offside.
22’ Ducksch almost scores, Vigouroux deflects for a corner.
 
HT: 0-0
46’ chances for both sides at the restart. Four yellow cards for Blues with their aggressive play, one for Swans.
 
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73’ Idah for Vipotnik, Eom for Inoussa
Blues have most of the play second half
80’ Good save by Vigouroux from Gray
82’ Tymon booked
83’ Paik booked
85’ Cabango booked
88’ Yalcouye for Galbraith
9 added minutes
93’ Stamenic booked by the card happy ref

93’ 1-0
here we go, last minute again, free header as Cabango beaten in the air by Dykes, all that brave defending for nothing. Neither Key nor Tymon can stop a cross, Tymon this time and it cost us the goal. Not the first time Dykes has scored against us, so good in the air.

96’ Widell and Cullen on, Franco and Ronald off
 
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Bit poor this half. Feels like we've needed to put the ball on the ground and play football instead of chucking it up in the air
 
FT: 1-0
101’ Goodbye Swans, a second defeat of the season, a disappointing end to a tight match, Birmingham getting most of the chances 6 to 2 on target.
Should have left Vipotnik on, Idah did nothing again.
 
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Birmingham leapfrog us in the table as we slump to 9th with the 3pm matches still to play.
A good start has turned into an average start with those two 1-0 away defeats and the two home draws, 8 points from a possible 18.
 
I know the midweek game probably plays a part but that was as bad as Hull 2nd half for me if not worse. Our chance creation has been desperately poor for 5 of the 6 league games we’ve played.

End of last season we were more creative so hopefully we can find that again. Not the most encouraging performances so far in terms of some of the underlying data.
 
Ref evens up the cards, final count 5-4 to Birmingham.
We were on the back foot and created hardly anything second-half, disappointing.
Vipotnik not offside for his goal, right centre-back Klarer was ahead of him.
 
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