Blues are beaten by Derby County with Andy Munro watching.
This was the type of performance that gets managers the sack and Chris Davies must be thankful that Tom Wagner has other things on his mind during his painstaking recovery from illness.
Derby are a decent side with a decent manager (as we all well know!) but were made to look like world-beaters against a Blues side supposedly playing in a must-win game. In reality we were never at the races, which isn’t surprising playing three at the back with Ibrahim Osman being both wasted and run ragged as a wingback. This also left the Blues back three looking vulnerable with even Christoph Klarer made to look a bit ponderous .
In front of them whilst Paik Seung-ho battled commendably, as did Jay Stansfield, Demarai Gray was ineffective and it was a case of a Ducksch out of water in terms of the latter’s ineffectiveness. Depressingly the substitutes made little difference with Blues continually under the cosh apart from a couple of flashes from Carlos Vincente when he came on.
The stats say it all about Chris Davies and how Blues play. We had near enough 50 per cent possession but managed only two shots in the whole game which pales into insignificance with Derby’s thirteen (!) attempts.
As has been said many times recently, Blues appear to have spent a lot of money to little effect; Ducksch who has good positional sense but zero pace and heading ability while Vincente seems very average for a man with a £7 million price tag. August Pryike looks about as robust as the straw man in the Wizard of Oz, Jonathan Panzo who plays like the free transfer he is and Ibrahim Osman, whose power and pace is wasted as he runs around in ever-decreasing circles.
Who is responsible for this mess, you might ask, and the answer must be Craig Gardner and Chris Davies in equal measure, the former for recommending these signings and the latter for failing to get a tune out of them. Either way, it’s incompetence at the highest level and both probably need to go sooner rather than later.
