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Match Report 2002-03 - Birmingham (a)
Premiership
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Date: Saturday 28th September 2002, 5.30pm Venue: St Andrew's Conditions: fevered,
professional, satisfied.
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| Birmingham City | 0 - 2 | Newcastle United |
| Half time: | 0 - 1 | |
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| Score Sheet: | ||
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Solano (34) Ameobi
(89) | |
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Teams |
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Nico Vaesen Jeff Kenna Darren Purse Kenny Cunningham Darren Carter Paul Devlin Robbie Savage Aliou Cisse Damien Johnson Clinton Morrison Stern John |
Given Griffin Dabizas O'Brien Hughes Solano Dyer Speed Robert Shearer LuaLua | |
| Substitutes: | ||
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Daryll Powell for Purse (79) Jovan Kirovski for Carter (68) Geoff Horsfield for John (79) |
Jenas for Solano (79) Ameobi for LuaLua (79) Viana for Robert (88) | |
| Subs not used: | ||
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Bennett Lazaridis |
Harper Bramble |
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| Bookings: | ||
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Savage (28) hoofing Hughes Purse (70) disputing free kick award Cisse (88) tackle from behind on Robert |
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| Sendings off: | ||
| None | None | |
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| Referee:
Steve Bennett (Orpington). Incurred the wrath of the home fans with a
series of decisions that seemed to be ok from our angle and failed to cause
great controversy among the TV pundits. It can be argued that their bookings weren't for serious offences and Savage got his fourth yellow in six games by trying to fill in gaps in the midfield rather than being genuinely malevolent. However, the self-inflicted Purse booking was as thoughtless as the Bellamy headbutt, while Bennett appeared to sicken of the continual moaning from home players and the inability of Stern John to run twenty yards without falling over. |
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| Attendance:
29,072. An old-fashioned atmosphere in what is now almost
a reasonable ground apart from one poor stand and two undeveloped corners.
Old-fashioned policing as well saw a number of fans warned for their behaviour
and a couple from each side dragged away. Around 2,500 Newcastle fans gave the team good encouragement and support, standing throughout as usual. Song of the day was "Alan Shearer, with a bandage, with a bandage", and "me ma" was reminded of where we're going on Tuesday and not to put the dinner on. Meanwhile those traditionalists among the throng would no doubt have been overjoyed by the choruses of "we hate Nottingham Forest..." in the second half. |
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34 mins A flowing move saw Griffin's tackle win possession before he laid it on for Speed. The Welshman played a long ball forward to Shearer, whose clever flick found Robert on the left. The Frenchman played the ball back towards Shearer infield, Al dummied it and distracted the defence, allowing Solano to connect with a sweetly-struck 20 yard curler that snuggled in the bottom right hand corner of the goal 0-1
Half time: Birmingham 0 Newcastle 1
89 mins A farcical goal from
Ameobi in front of the away section sealed matters, although the
player seemed almost embarrassed to celebrate it and the reaction from the
travelling fans varied from pogoing to side-splitting laughter.
With the City side stretched, Shearer and Shola ran at their penalty area
and Al played a return ball back from the right flank. Ameobi
brushed past Cunningham to place himself one-on-one with the approaching
keeper and although he appeared to stumble as he hit his shot, it
ricocheted back off the keeper, hit him on the leg and bounced into the
net. They all count though as somebody once said... 0-2
Full time: Birmingham 0 Newcastle 2
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We Said |
Sir Bobby said:
"In their last home game, Birmingham beat Aston Villa 3-0, so this was a big result for us. We have been a bit vulnerable at the back and we held a better line today.
"Their strikers never got behind us. Nikos Dabizas and Andy O'Brien defended well and we had cover from the full-backs. They never got through us.
"We had a poor start, but there is still a long way to go and masses of games to play."
"The Premiership is a tough league, but there are teams you can beat.
"When you go abroad, you have got to play teams who have finished one, two and three in those countries. There are no easy matches.
"We played well against Feyenoord and haven't lost confidence. We will go to Juventus full of confidence and put on a show.
"There is an amazing amount to play for and we are not out of it. The UEFA Cup is a stepping stone backwards, but we have got something to play for."
Alan Shearer commented:
"We get no rest. We fly to Juventus tomorrow and are looking forward to it. We need a win and anything else than a result will make it impossible to progress."
"We knew from the start it would be one hell of a battle.
"The back four were brilliant, and helped by a strong midfield. They have come in for a lot of criticism because we have not kept as many clean sheets as we would like to, but it is a team game and you have to defend from the front. We battled well and deserved the three points.
"It was our first win on the road
today and hopefully there are more to come."
Shola Ameobi chipped in:
"To come on and score is what you
want to do as a striker, I am getting back into it now and hopefully there
is more to come."
And Nobby Solano spoke to the Chronicle:
"I was very pleased with that win and I thought we played some
very good football before we scored.
"When the ball came across I shouted to Alan Shearer to leave it, which he did, and while I didn't have much time, I managed to hit it well enough.
"This was three very important points for us because we know we have to recover from a not-too-convincing start.
"Before the kick-off on Saturday night we knew that Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United had won, but we also knew that Chelsea and Leeds had lost.
"We've got to
get back into the top six and Saturday's win has helped us on that score.
As far my goal is concerned, it was good for my confidence and also good
for the team."
Talking about Juventus:
"We need to go out there tomorrow night and try to win. I know it's going to be hard and maybe no one else believes we can do it, especially as Juventus beat Kiev 5-0 last Tuesday night.
"But I think we have a chance. I suppose a draw would be a good result because we still have two home games left to play and we would not be out of it.
"But a win would help us catch up the other teams in the group. We still have four Champions' League games left, and if we can get nine points then I still think we can qualify.
"We worked so
hard to get into the Champions' League last season and we want to prove
that we belong at this level."
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They Said |
Steve Bruce whined:
"Being brutally honest, the better team won. We are disappointed because we've set a standard and, for the first time, we did not live up to it, especially in the first half.
"We need nine or 10 of our players performing at seven or eight out of 10. For whatever reason, we didn't have that in this game.
"We know we can play better than that. That is probably as disappointing as we have been.
"We always knew it was going to be tough and Newcastle played very well. We have got to pick ourselves up and know we can perform better. We have set ourselves standards.
"The lads are honest and there is an excellent spirit. We let that drop in the first half. At least we caused them problems in the second half when we got the ball down."
"We are under no illusions. It is
going to be a long, tough season - but we know we can perform better than
that."
He went on to reveal his part in the abortive transfer of Shearer from
Blackburn to Manchester United:
"I was doing a live game at Liverpool for Sky Sports and Alan was
also on the commentary team.
"I don't know whether I should be saying this, but it was me who
tapped him up and told Alan that United wanted him.
"But I can't have done a very good job because he ended up going to
Newcastle instead.
"He was the complete centre-forward in the country at the time and
every top club in Europe would have liked to sign him."
A rare example of bias-free provincial match reporting appeared
from David Instone in the Express & Star
newspaper:
"There will inevitably be days when Blues are outclassed at this level - and Saturday teatime was one of them.
"It may have taken a fortunate injury-time goal from substitute Shola Ameobi finally to reflect Newcastle's supremacy, but the class gap was there for all to see from first whistle to last.
"In many ways, Birmingham were merely picked off. They buzzed round Shay Given's goal on occasions amid great industry and then, like irritable flies, were swatted away and put in their place.
"So much of what they might achieve this season is based on the type of maximum-energy performances that memorably did for Villa and Leeds. This game contained those same elements, only this time they could not summon either the spectacular finishing of that first win or induce the freakish gifts of the second."
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Match Stats |
Our first away victory of the
Premiership season at the 4th attempt and a first ever meeting between the
two sides in the Premiership.
Our last top-level victory at St.Andrew's came in season 1985/86 when George Reilly
scored the only goal of the game.
A goal for Shola to get him off the mark for the season in his 9th game
and also his first senior strike of 2002.
His last goal came in November 2001 when Ipswich were beaten on Tyneside - 18 games ago, but one has to go back to January 2001 for his last Premiership goal, at Leeds.
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Waffle |
Having in-laws from the Blue side of Birmingham makes any meeting with this lot a nervy occasion for me. Imagine how unbearable the two defeats in the Worthless Cup were, when the Blues were a league below us. However, for some reason this eternal pessimist arrived at St. Andrews fully expecting the comfortable victory that followed.
I can't really explain why. Perhaps their recent wins against Leeds and Villa just seemed to be beckoning the law of averages to rule in our favour. Maybe it was just the feeling that our spluttering season might just kick in to life sooner rather than later with the derby win still eclipsing Champions League disappointment.
But it was probably because whichever way you looked at the two line-ups, we should never lose to this side of First Division journeymen (Savage, Cunningham, Johnson, Morrison, Horsfield) and second rate imports (Cisse and John). Purse looked way out of his depth and possibly only Devlin showed a glimpse of anything approaching class.
It will take some mighty effort to get a result in Turin on Tuesday but it was going to take an equal amount of effort not to take all three points against this mob.
Having said that (and I probably would have disgusted at such Premiership snobbery and smugness ten years ago) it wasn't until Ameobi's jammy winner that we could feel our victory was secure. Some second half pressure and corners never really threatened our goal but you get the feeling that if they'd sneaked an equaliser they may well have got another, backed by a noisy crowd.
It was actually a decent atmosphere for a game played at an unreal time of day. Teatime on a Saturday is not when Association Football was meant to be played. Travelling to the game listening to all the other matches finishing didn't seem right and having editions of the Brummie Pink (Sports Argus) thrust at you on your way from the ground flew against all football tradition. Money talks, as they say.
In terms of performance I still don't think we hit anything like the heights that we can do and in comparison to the Feyenoord defeat I didn't think we were half as good. But then we didn't need to be. It was probably closer to the display against the mackems, but the comfort of a two goal cushion came 50 minutes later than in this game. The quality of the opposition was about the same, though.
Our first goal took a while in coming and despite pots of possession, both sides probably had an equal number of half chances before Nobby's strike. Most of our openings came down the right through Solano and like in many games this season a better final ball would have seen us well in front at the break. At the other end a Devlin free-kick and snapshot did cause Shay some concerns but a couple of decent saves, another from Stern John, kept our goal intact.
Robbie Savage had already seen yellow before break, taking him to within one card of a suspension and second half bookings for Cisse and Purse, who will have to sit out the next match, said a lot about Steve Bruce's side. Birmingham aren't the most malicious side in the world, in fact their continual niggling and moaning may have been an asset in the First Division but they won't get away with it in the Premiership.
There is an art to winning decisions and fouling players without actually conceding free-kicks, just as there is to influencing the ref and linesmen with the verbals. Luckily we have the best in the game at it and their manager was also a fine exponent but messrs Savage, Cisse and Purse are so unintelligent in the way they go about their business they must drive Steve Bruce to distraction.
Stern John was less subtle than all of them when his flailing arm caught Dabizas in the face in the first half after the two had tangled moments earlier. Had Dabizas not set off his own personal land mine and flung himself backwards in theatrical style, John may have been in trouble. Dabs does himself no favours with histrionics like that and I'm sure I can't be the only one who would love to cut the Greek man's arms off - his continual "I never touched him ref" arm gestures make my blood boil and must be the source of large numbers of decisions against us.
The second half was disappointing in that we gave away the ball cheaply but luckily it was often presented back at half the price. We really should have had the game wrapped up with a second goal way before Ameobi's late introduction and Kieron Dyer's form at the moment must be concerning Bobby.
He looks fit enough and his pace still allows him to evade most defenders. He even tracks back and challenges more than most but with the ball at his feet he seems lost at the moment. His control often let him down in this game and there doesn't seem to be anything positive in his play, forever receiving the ball and playing it backwards when defenders are there for the taking. The weight of the world seems to be on the lad's shoulders, for whatever reason, with only the slightest miscalculated pass from his colleagues sending him into a desperate downward spiral of sunken shoulders and raised eyebrows. We've already got Laurent Robert for that.
So, our first Premiership three-pointer away from home and after last season's record haul on our travels, let's hope there are plenty more to follow. There won't be many occasions when they come as easily as this but hopefully better opposition will bring the best out of our side. As for Blues, down with the mackems must be the conclusion on this display but I'm assured this was an off day. We'll see....
Niall Mackenzie