Welcome Old Fox - great first post.

I personally think Sven was right to send the sane team out. It gives the right message to the players - play well and you'll be in the team.

Where I felt Sven went wrong was not making a change at half time. It clearly wasn't working and we looked devoid of ideas. Bringing Wellens on to add that bit of creativity and quality may have made a difference.

As it stands now, Sven will have no issues changing it for Weds. If like to see Wellens, Beckford and Johnson in for Abe, Danns and Vassell. We need one of Dyer or Howard on the bench also, otherwise we're always going like for like.

Hopefully we'll be back to winning ways and we can put the Birmingham nightmare behind us!

Welcome Old Fox ..

Roll on Wednesday night !

Yes, welcome Old Fox. Good post
Big Arthur was my boyhood hero. We scored, and conceded, quite a few goals in those days and yo-yo'd up and down between Div 1 and 2.
9d to get in the boys entrance in the Popular stand. If you were really lucky you got to sit behind the A-B-C etc half time score board.
Great memories

Welcome oldfox. We may well have passed one another as we blatted along that weary M1 over many years starting out from Essex (hence the 'downsouf' business) and later changing to the tedious M11/A14 alternative.

Yes, welcome aboard, Oldfox. I'm with Mersey on the team selection at St Andrews: it was right to go with the side which walloped Derby but the substitutions were perhaps a bit late. Wellens in particular needed to be out there sooner. Otherwise there weren't many lessons to be taken, I feel, from a game which was distorted by unaccountable events. Save perhaps lessons for Mills and King, about using common sense.

Hello!

Admittedly, I would have definately gone with the same team (maybe changing the subs) and I thoroughly believed we comfortably smashed them first half - we just needed to score!

The $h*t hit the fan when they came out all guns blazing and we just weren't prepared or switched on, can't disagree at the penalty too much although I did think it was soft, and if that was a penalty - andy kings obstruction in the box should definately have been an indirect free kick.

The game changed from here, we lost momentum, positivity and all our good work went down the drain, then Mills' red card (which I think was definately a yellow for bad challenge, however the fact he clearly won the ball shouldn't have made it red) was just the icing on the cake.

I don't believe we have lost our fine form, as I think the ref ruined this game for us, however there was a major problem getting the ball from midfield to strikers and for anyone to shoot! Don't know if our players have been watching barcelona too much but can't remember many shots at all considering we were losing.

That's my take on the game anyway, taking it with a pinch of salt and moving on to Watford tomorrow.

Thanks for all your warm welcomes, nice to be amongst friends.

I just thought that with a such an important tough away game that we needed to win to kick start our push for promotion, we could not afford to leave out the experience of Wellens, Johnson and Beckford. However, I do take your point

Me Old,
I thought he would not risk Abe after his japan trip.
We played poorly after the last international break.
We will win on Wednesday and move on.

We must win the next two home matches as away wins are looking very scarce this season. (what is it, 1 goal in the last 4 games) Knowing city though we will probably make a horlicks of one of them!

It was a tough decision on Saturday, but anyone left out after the Derby game would feel gutted. Although perhaps Birmingham might have known that and played on it...

Regarding the other matches this week, I think we'll beat Millwall - the fans will be distracted by chants of "We pay your benefits" and "Go home to your tower blocks" and acting hard in front of the travelling lions fans, while Millwall have an awful away record so far this season.
However, Watford concerns me. That game will be all about the football with an impatient home crowd. If they park the team bus at the kick-off and we're not creating much after 10/15 minutes, I think that crowd will turn and Watford will be right in the match. If we get a goal early I think we'll be flying. If we don't, I can quite easily see a 0-0 or a fight just to reach 1-1 from 0-1 down.

"I personally think Sven was right to send the sane team out."

I'm not sure how many of them qualify for that description. Several played as if they were on medication – and a couple more probably should have been.

Boom Boom