Brum battle and block their way to tight win

23rd Oct 2009

Men’s Foot­ball 1st

Birm­ing­ham

v

Not­ting­ham

1–0

Uni­ver­sity of Birm­ing­ham mens foot­ball 1st team opened their account in the BUSA North­ern Pre­mier­ship with a 1–0 win at home to newly pro­moted Not­ting­ham.  But it took a late deflected shot by Adam Farn­worth to seal the victory.

The game started at a fre­netic pace with fierce tack­les and robust chal­lenges from both sides.  Birm­ing­ham almost took the lead on six min­utes when a Jamie Williams free-kick resulted in ping-ball in the Not­ting­ham box, the ball even­tu­ally trick­ling ago­niz­ingly past the right-hand post.

The fast tempo ensued with nei­ther side really find­ing their rhythm.  A sus­tained spell of Birm­ing­ham pres­sure led to a great chance for Tim Parry on 16 min­utes but his close-range shot can­noned off the post.

Birmingham’s approach play grad­u­ally began to improve. On 24 min­utes, Jamie Williams bril­liantly nut­megged his marker and whipped in a dan­ger­ous left-footed cross which was well snuffed out by the Not­ting­ham defence.

Nottingham’s first shot on goal came on 33 min­utes, Iago Moreno’s acute low shot forc­ing a good near-post save from the hith­erto spec­ta­tor Simon Lynn.  Lynn was called into action again from the result­ing cor­ner, ris­ing above the Not­ting­ham strik­ers to punch the ball to safety.

Birm­ing­ham were back on the attack moments later.  Parry again, almost found the net when his long-range strike whis­tled inches past the left-hand post, leav­ing the keeper well beaten but the scores still level.

Not­ting­ham almost pinched the lead on the stroke of half-time when a lapse of con­cen­tra­tion in the Birm­ing­ham back line allowed Lee Raji to spring the off­side trap.  But a superb sav­ing tackle from Dave Bel­lis spared the centre-back’s blushes.

The sides went in level at half-time with the home side look­ing the more likely to score but still fail­ing to really assert con­trol over the game.

The sec­ond half began mis­er­ably.  Both sides strug­gled to keep the ball and nei­ther looked liked break­ing the dead­lock.  Birm­ing­ham appeared totally bereft of ideas and their lack of chances led to grow­ing frus­tra­tion among the play­ers.  Their oppo­nents, though fired up, were equally devoid of creativity.

The hosts con­tin­ued plug­ging away and even­tu­ally the chances came.  An auda­cious 40-yard effort from full back Rob God­frey on the hour mark had Not­ting­ham keeper Patrick Sim­son sprawl­ing to his left and only missed by a whisker.

Birm­ing­ham were in the ascen­dancy and even­tu­ally broke the dead­lock on 74 min­utes. Dave Bel­lis’ long ball, headed down by Sammy Ross, found it’s way into the path of Adam Farn­worth; who, turn­ing his man fired his shot in low and with the aid of a deflec­tion deceived Sim­son in the Not­ting­ham goal.  The despair­ing keeper got a hand to it but it wasn’t enough to the keep it from creep­ing over the line.

Not­ting­ham used up their sub­sti­tutes and went gung-ho in search of the equaliser.  The pres­sure began to build but Birm­ing­ham defended res­olutely to pre­vent any clear cut chances. Then, in the 95th minute of stop­page time, a heroic last-ditch piece of defend­ing from sub­sti­tute James Secker saved a cer­tain goal, ensur­ing the three points were Birm­ing­hams, and spark­ing loud cel­e­bra­tions from the home supporters.

After the game, Birm­ing­ham man­ager Chris Wright said he was pleased with per­for­mance: ‘In the first half I thought we retained the ball really well, espe­cially with how we switched the play. We didn’t panic under pres­sure.  The per­for­mance was much improved from the last game.’

Unfor­tu­nately though, he revealed the injury sus­tained by star striker Rich Pow­ell in the last game is a fairly seri­ous one: ‘The physio says it will be at least 5 to 6 weeks.  He’s dam­aged the fibres of his medial cru­ci­ate lig­a­ment.  They did say it would be ten weeks, but now we’re hop­ing to have him back by around Christmas.’

When quizzed over Birmingham’s poor goal-scoring record of late though, Wright seemed unper­turbed: ‘It’s not really a con­cern because we’re keep­ing clean sheets.  Yeah, it’s nice to win by three or four but Not­ting­ham defended well and looked threat­en­ing on the attack. I’m pleased with the win.’

It was a cru­cial first win of the sea­son for Birm­ing­ham but not an alto­gether con­vinc­ing one.  Birmingham’s start­ing line-up con­sisted of six changes from the side that lost to Cad­bury in pre-season and the team have only man­aged to score one goal in their last three out­ings.  But the win will no doubt boost the con­fi­dence of the squad and stand them in good stead for their next league match away to Leeds.

By Dave Rudge