Blues News: two more wins and a big loss

Birmingham City had another successful week on the pitch, logging two wins. The first was in League One, beating Charlton Athletic (7th place) 1-0 on a Jay Stansfield goal. At the same time Wycombe Wanderers drew with lowly Crawley Town 1-1 and Wrexham beat almost as lowly Northampton Town 2-0. That extended the Blues’ lead in the division to a whopping nine points with a game in hand.

All three teams played again on Tuesday, Wycombe and Wrexham both being in league play. Wycombe beat Bristol Rovers 2-0 but Wrexham lost 0-2 to 6th-place Leyton Orient. That cut Birmningham’s league lead to 6 points but added a second game in hand. Wrexham dropped to 5 points behind Wycombe and look to be firmly in the playoff chase now, which is being tightly contested between about seven teams.

The Blues were out of league play because they were facing Bradford City in the semi-finals of the EFL Trophy. They ended up winning 2-1 on an early Jay Stansfield goal and a late Lyndon Dykes goal off the bench. That was pretty much the expected result but the big issue was that Jay Stansfield was stretchered off in the second half after a clumsy (but apparently legal) challenge in the box by Bradford defender Romoney Crichlow-Noble. While Jay was down at one end the effectively 10-man City allowed the tying goal in fact. The injury is expected to keep him out of the lineup for about a month.

That means he will miss seven league games, including a massive top-of-the-table matchup next weekend with Wycombe. He has scored 16 goals in league play, which leaves a pretty big void to fill. Alfie May, who has been relegated to a substitute role recently, will almost certainly be the one called on to fill it; he has 10 goals. Tomoki Iwata is next best in the squad with 5 goals.

However, if you take out Jay’s 7 league penalty goals and Alfie’s 1 league penalty goal, Alfie is actually scoring in open play at a faster rate than Jay (a goal every 173 minutes as compared with Jay’s 199 minutes). So, not so bad.

That will be tested twice this week as the Blues head to Reading tomorrow (6:30am, no US TV) and host Leyton Orient Tuesday (1:45pm, no US TV). Reading are 9th, Orient 6th. As noted, Wycombe is after that and a week Tuesday is Bolton Wanderers (8th). Rough time to lose your top scorer regardless of the stats above.

Obviously the EFL Trophy semi-final win means the Blues have an opportunity to hoist some silverware. That will come April 13th at Wembley Stadium, when they will face the winners of Wrexham v. Peterborough United, which is to be played this Wednesday (1:20pm, Paramount+). Interestingly, the last time Birmingham City won any titles was exactly 30 years ago when they won both the EFL Trophy and the Seccond Division (now League One). The exact same double is thus on the cards again.