The season continues to go less than smoothly for Birmingham City. Last Saturday they faced Bristol City. Despite a thoroughly dominant performance, the Blues fell 0-1 on a breakaway play just before halftime. Birmingham held two-thirds of the possession and piled on 14 shots. None were on target though, which is a big problem. In fact, the goal was the only shot on target in the entire game.
The Blues remain mired in 15th in the table. They have a double-game week coming up. Tomorrow they play Portsmouth at home (10:00am, Paramount+). Portsmouth are 18th, which suggests an even but winnable game. Tuesday will be much harder: again at home, they play Millwall, who are in 3rd (1:45pm, no US TV). And that’s ahead of next Saturday’s game at Middlesbrough, who are 2nd. After that is an international break.
The pressure is thus very much building on manager Chris Davies who needs to start producing results quickly. That international break is rumored to be more or less a deadline for measurable improvement. His lineup options remain hampered by injuries but are easing somewhat; Bright Osayi-Samuel should be back in the squad after serving a suspension. Jack Robinson, who was sent off two weeks ago, is apparently still on suspension as not only did get the red card it was for a double-yellow which means he also got a yellow card accumulation penalty. Robinson is, frankly, a disaster waiting to happen and his absence may not be a great loss. Ethan Laird (hamstring), Scott Wright (knee) and Lee Buchanan (knee) are all out long term. Laird particularly will be missed.
