Just couldn’t quite finish things off.
Although you could make the argument that we did finish things off, only for the referee to get in the way of things. Birmingham City continued their unbeaten run last night, extending it to four games in all competitions as they were held 1-1 at the Riverside against Middlesbrough. And whilst they weren’t able to finish the job, Blues boss Pep Clotet was happy with the way that his side were able to keep the pressure on the hosts.
Speaking after the game, Clotet talked about his pleasure not only when it came to the attacking aspects of the game, but also when it came to keeping the home side at bay:
“The reality is we saw a winning display, we were on top of everything, we controlled all of the shots. The most dangerous thing they had was the penalty but we had total control of the game at 1-0 and at 1-1 we kept attacking, you can always say we should have scored another goal on the numerous breaks and shots we had before but we did ‘score’ the second goal.”
Are we willing to actually give Clotet a little bit of praise here for once?
The fact that he managed to go away from home and pretty much go toe to toe against a team who have been on quite a good run recently, and whose only defeats came at the hands of a Premier League side and a team who are third in the Championship (at time of writing), so they aren’t exactly pushovers in this division despite their standing.
I’ve said before that we needed to wait until we had a full squad available before we could really start to judge Clotet and his work at the club, and now that the players are starting to come back to fitness, we’re starting to put together a nice unbeaten run.
Were the Blues robbed on this occasion?
Yes
No
Now we just have to work out how to turn those draws into wins, and hopefully we won’t have the referees standing in our way when we do work out what to do.
