Shoots of recovery evident but lack of goals is a conern

As soon as I walked in to work this morning, one colleague said ‘finally’. I grinned from ear to ear. ‘It`s been coming for weeks’, I replied. And looking back at the previous ten winless games, Blues could have won all of them if they had taken their chances.

While ifs and buts win you nothing in football, it`s evident that Gianfranco Zola`s methods are starting to rub off on to the players. Take the defeat at Derby just after Christmas as an example. The passing was slow, directionless and often wayward. Blues had no cohesion and looked like a team who didn`t have a clue what to do. In comparison, Saturdays win against Fulham, and even Tuesdays defeat against Reading, was refreshing. To watch Blues take the game to decent opposition and create a hatful of chances was pleasing.

One worry still remains and that is Blues` lack of goals. In Zola`s eleven games at the helm, Blues have had 147 shots – that is 13.3 per game. Taking away the Derby game in which Blues only mustered up five shots (one on target), their shot count is in double figures in ten of the eleven games. Shots on target is slightly lower – 36 in eleven games, or an average of 3.2 per game.

For all their efforts, Blues have only scored nine – that`s a ratio of one every 16.3 shots. And under Zola, Blues have only scored more than one goal on one occasion, a 2-2 draw at Barnsley.

The positives signs are there, yet if Birmingham City are going to push on, they need to find a cutting edge.

We now turn our attention to a Friday night televised game at Hillsbrough. I`m not going to claim that Zola`s first win solves every little issue (as the stats above show) but it`s a platform to build on. Hillsbrough is a tough place to go and Blues will have to be at their very best to come away with even a point. Nobody is expecting Blues to win ten games on the trot, we just want to see progression and if we can win, say, two of our next four (Sheff Wed & Preston away, QPR home, Wolves away) that`ll show the growing shoots of recovery are in motion.