Food for thought as young duo give Blues creative edge

So that’s it. The real stuff begins at St Andrews next week and it’ll be a case of ‘suck it and see’ in terms of Blues being ready for the big kick off.

Blues’ issues were summarised in 90 minutes of today’s final pre-season friendly against Roda JC. Despite having the lions share of the ball, Gary Rowett’s men lacked a bit of punch in the final third.

Clayton Donaldson, as usual, did all of the mucky stuff well and worked incredibly hard. But when chances came his way, they went begging.

Defensively, the team looked fairly solid, albeit Roda didn’t ask many questions of the back four. Diego Fabbrini was as illustrious as always with David Cotterill and Jacques Maghoma lively.

But the game didn’t spark into life from a creative point of view until the introduction of Reece Brown and Jack Storer.

Brown is pure talent with the ball at his feet and is calmness personified. With Brown pulling the strings, and Storer chasing, harrying and making intelligent off-ball runs, Blues looked decent.

A gorgeous Brown pass, splitting the defence open and sending Donaldson through, was the pass of the afternoon. Unfortunately, Donaldson was bundled down and couldn’t get his shot away.

Storer came close with a header and also did his bit to bring players into the game and looked every inch as positive and confident as we’ve come to expect.

So now Rowett has decisions to make. His team selection suddenly isn’t as cut and dry as he assumed it would be. Storer will count himself as very hard done by if he isn’t amongst the substitutes next weekend and Brown will feel he has really staked his claim.