Andy Munro witnesses the end of Blues unbeaten run – in spirit, anyway.
Well I suppose that the unbeaten run had to end sometime and it seemed probable that it would be an away rather a home fixture. To keep track of developments from Brum, I tuned into BRMB to listen to the wisdom (?) of Tommy Mooney. Now I was a big fan of Tommy as a player and his wholehearted attitude on the pitch set a good example. However, as a commentator he makes Lily Savage look positively cerebral.
Tommy, for example, thought that N’Daw was clueless against Bruges and, while he was poor in the first half – like everybody else I hasten to add – he had a storming second half. Anyway our Tommy thought the Reading defeat was probably because some of the players were tired citing a below par ‘Agent’ Ridgewell (and by the way that ‘Agent’ tag seems to becoming more appropriate with every game). He conveniently overlooked the fact that the Ridge never played 90 minutes against Bruges.
However, while the 1-0 loss needs to be set against hammerings/losses dealt to Stoke City and Fulham, the fact remains that most of the side turning out against Reading didn’t even start against Bruges so they shouldn’t have been jaded.
At the start of proceedings Blues took the first few minutes to get going (now there’s a surprise!) but once they did, they looked the side most likely to. Unfortunately, thanks partly due to the quality of the Reading keeper, they failed to register. Interestingly, Tommy Mooney’s view was that King and Wood aren’t the best partnership and needed the unpredictability of Zigic! Complete rubbish in my humble opinion – just because the Woods and King partnership failed to register for once doesn’t suddenly make them ineffective and Ziggy currently is best coming off the bench.
Predictably Reading scored a late winner but **** happens and overall the Blues performance was more than competent but just lacked the finishing touch. It’s still onwards and upwards but here’s a plea for Krissy H to play his strongest side against Braga, a game that means so much to travelling Bluenoses. Anyway, let’s face it, impetus beats tiredness any day.
