BFTG - Brum

[tmesis]

Two biggest differences for me last night - first, the effort the players put it. Second, they didn't have the body language of a team who expected to lose.

Luck was well and truly ridden a couple of times at least, but with those committment levels, and that difference in attitude for the rest of the season, there's no way the club finishes in the bottom three.

Maintaining both is a different matter though.

[3points]

Not convinced Hein is better at crosses, though I admit the gale at Posh is making that somewhat unfair.

Also think Southwood would look a lot less bad at crosses with a team that can defend them around him. Isn’t the Southwood is bad at crosses thing basically because he landed badly under pressure and spilled one?

Hein certainly has a more reassuring height about him though.

he also fumbled the ball for Derby’s first so he has dropped two crosses resulting in goals.

If Hein can’t kick accurately by the age of 18, then he’s never going to be great with his feet. He reminds me of Anssi Jaakkola

They put a lot of crosses in against us at the SCL. Likely because Southwood got caught underneath the goal at Pride Park and they recognised crosses as his big weakness.

Tbf until the mistake against Derby I thought Southwood had looked much better dealing with crosses than Cabral who never came for crosses

[tidus_mi2]

While the stats paint a picture of a dominant Birmingham against a lucky Reading, I think the xG for the game does summarise it quite well, a lot of low quality chances created by Birmingham, whereas ours where of greater quality, of course a penalty is worth a full 1.0 xG so that really drives it up.

[YorkshireRoyal99]

I saw Lee Bowyer's comments who said he was baffled that they didn't win the game but how many chances did they actually have?

Had a couple of dangerous openings in the first half, however not much and had a few efforts in the second half. Hernandez went close with a shot that went wide and I think Taylor got in behind in a 1v1 where Hein did really well to make himself big (although I think it was given for offside anyway). Taylor himself flashed one wide from a tight angle as well which probably counts as a "low quality chance" because he wasn't going to score from that.

I must admit, despite how nervy I was at 2-1, I didn't really think they looked like they were going to score unless it came through an error or some sort of freak goal, as it turned out that's how it happened. They just lacked quality really in the final third and certainly weren't that good.