Andy Munro comments on Blues’ 2-0 defeat at West Ham.
No doubt, there was an air of smugness in the West Ham boardroom after the Hammers’ two goal win. Smugness that will only increase if Blues get ‘hammered’ financially due to the naivety/profligacy of their various Chinese football dynasties. (Thank you Sully, Brady and the Golds!)
Consequently a win would have been particularly sweet and with the rub of the green, Blues could definitely have come away with a replay. However, when you can bring on a multi million pound striker like Andy Carroll then it shows the gap in resources.
Blues didn’t risk either Pedersen or Jota but despite that they had, to use typical footballing parlance, a right good go. This was despite going behind so early which could easily have resulted in a heavy morale-sapping defeat. Yet this Blues team are made of sterner stuff and they kept their shape and made plenty of chances in an open game.
It was good to see Mahoney step up to the plate as a starting player rather than a substitute and he now needs to show that consistency at Championship level. It was also good to see Soloman Otabor get some minutes as he needs game time to resurrect the signs of the early promise he showed when he first made his debut.
Blues now have a week’s welcome rest before an equally stern test against an uncompromising Boro’ side. I note that in the after-match comments by the various managers that Dean Smith suggested his players lack of energy might partly be due to the heavy fixture list. Given the size of their first team squad and high earners, we perhaps should be expecting Blues’ more modest squad to therefore be almost comatose; credit to them therefore for their upbeat, if unsuccessful, performance down in the East End of London.
