Well, that’s one way to make everything a little bit less positive around St Andrew’s.
Just as things were starting to look up with our ten-game unbeaten run, we get this news to bring us crashing back down to earth, let’s just hope it isn’t as serious as these Blues fans think that it’s going to be. But even if it is, I still think there’s room for some positives in there.
The club announced yesterday that Birmingham City’s flavour of the month Scott Hogan sustained an ankle injury during the team’s draw with Brentford on Saturday, and that he is set for further assessments to determine how severe it’s likely to be.
Hogan had got off to a great start in a Blues shirt, with three goals in his first three games, all of them coming in victories, however it looks like we could be without him for a while depending on if it’s anything significant. As I said though, I wouldn’t be too concerned with it even if he’s out for the rest of the season, though I doubt it’ll come to that.
Given how we now have a sizeable gap between us and the relegation zone of 13 points and +10 goal difference over the team in 22nd, I think relegation fears should be put to bed for now and attention put firmly on next season.
As I hinted at a few days ago, you could make the argument that the goals he’s scored in our wins mean that he’s already paid us back in terms of our battle against relegation, so it’s pretty much job done on that front.
And this injury, regardless of how bad it is to Hogan is a great chance for us to start thinking about potential partners for Lukas Jutkiewicz for 2020/21. Could it be someone like Miguel Fernandez from the youth team? Maybe push Jude Bellingham further up the field and play him as a ‘second-striker’ similar to how he played away at Reading?
So don’t be too disheartened with this news, whilst we are going to miss Hogan, this should be seen as a great opportunity rather than an opportunity being taken away from us.
Is there another option for us going forward that I haven’t thought of yet? Let me know what you think down below.