TF Match Report - Birmingham City 2-3 Newcastle Utd, Cup 4th round
Matthew enjoys an old-fashioned day out in the nation's second city. Eventually...
It’s easy to fall into lazy clichés and call Birmingham a shithole. This is because Birmingham is in fact a total and utter shithole.
The centre is basically one big 70s shopping centre; the walk through Digbeth a post-industrial wasteland, with the occasional sex shop, opportunistic car park, and gentrified bar. Oh, but at the end lies the magical Mecca of St Andrews @Knightshead Park. This is also a total and utter shithole.
An away end holding 5,000 is accessible only through one gateway from the side. Remind you of anywhere in South Yorkshire?
Helpfully, the team coaches were parked so as to funnel us all through an even narrower gap at the end of which we were all searched, except for the “ladies” who were plucked out of the impossibly dense throng and made to force their way to the right for their search lane.
No signage, no stewards, no indication of what was happening. And then a grand total of five turnstiles, none of which featured an actual human being to deal with tickets that didn’t work. I was somewhat disgruntled.
The lessons of Elland Road three years ago clearly haven’t been learnt. Today it all seemed reasonably civilised and good-humoured, but that was more by luck than judgement.
As long as football fans are all treated as cattle, a threat to be controlled and managed in facilities totally unsuited to anything anyone would expect in any other walk of life, this will continue to happen.
Clearly the bright sparkly US-funded future of the Blues doesn’t set much stall by real people. Getting a pint involved using an ordering station before taking your receipt to the collection point. Except the ordering station didn’t actually issue any of the said receipts.
Your correspondent managed to be charged three times for a single pint of nearly undrinkable fizzy piss, and if the purpose of the automated ordering was to relieve crowding around the bars, it failed abysmally. I was getting a little grumpy.
So imagine my uncontrollable joy as I reached my seat just in time to see a corner whizz over to the far post where a completely free header and a couple of challenges as weak and over-priced as my pint allowed some twat in blue to slam the ball into the net.
Several terminally overexcited locals galloped down the side of the pitch in that inimitable style perfected by those special young lads at Blackburn. Grumpiness turned into all-consuming simmering fury.
Presumably it was Tino’s job to pick up at the far post, the prelude to the most torrid of afternoons when he was repeatedly skinned by the tricky no. 14 on the Blues left. All across the park, the home side was quicker to the ball, more urgent, more physical.
Hardly surprising given that we made nine changes, many of whom hadn’t played for several months. Pope’s footwork hardly inspired confidence. More chances came and went. Fury was turning into a living nightmare.
Happily all was not lost. I would love to tell you something about the two goals that brought us back into things. Unfortunately, the view from row 7 of the away end through the grim drizzly Brummy murk offered little insight.
The first we all thought was being flagged for offside, to the point where no-one celebrated. The second looked like a chaotic scramble that again hadn’t actually troubled the net. It was a strange disorientating experience.
Without apparently scoring we were somehow ahead, but just when it looked like we’d found a way out of the hole we’d dug for ourselves, the ball dropped at the edge of the box and Iwata thunderbastarded it in a manner reminiscent of Oba at White Hart Lane.
A total fluke that threatened to become a Ronnie Radford for the TikTok generation.
If I’d had a moment to gather some sober perspective, I might have reflected on the fact that we’d been caught cold from a corner in the second minute and then conceded a strike that the lad couldn’t have hit again if he tried it a thousand times.
Even with a makeshift front three with Osula on the right, we had cut through them whenever we’d actually strung two passes together. There wasn’t actually anything to fear here. Except perhaps fear itself.
And so the second half played out relatively easily. Sandro replaced Bruno at halftime in a move that was presumably pre-planned, before Murphy and Fab came on for Wilson and Burn early on.
But this was still a makeshift second XI that had too much quality for the home side who resorted to full-on physical assault, unchecked by a referee who had clearly lost all control. First Fab and then little Joe were sent sprawling into the advertising hoardings, the latter a barely concealed bodyslam.
Gradually we wrested control, and our best concerted period of the match yielded the winner, Longstaff slipping in Willock who slid the ball through the keeper’s legs. The away end found its voice at last. Mothers were on standby for tea-related news once more. The laughable delusions of the locals revealed themselves to all. I cheered up a little.
There was still time for Murphy to demonstrate that his recent transformation hasn’t done anything for his ability to finish one-on-ones - literally no-one, but no-one expected any other outcome. Happily, even 12 minutes of stoppage time and the appearance of Grant Hanley did nothing to unsettle us.
In truth, we learnt little we didn’t already know. Miley looked promising, Osula bustled and harried with pleasing agricultural physicality, Longstaff looked to have regressed alarmingly. God knows what Sandro made of it all.
But in the end we won a football match straight out of the 1970s, in a football ground out of the 1970s, in a city out of the 1970s, when the watching public no doubt hoped for an upset out of the 1970s.
Maybe we’re no longer a club trapped in the past. Maybe our future is finally going to be different.
Matthew Philpotts
Newcastle United Supporters Trust are currently compiling reports of safety concerns at St Andrew’s stadium, Birmingham last night. Please contact NUST with your experiences to support the matter being progressed with the relevant authorities.
Contact board@nufctrust.co.uk
I visit Birmingham a lot. It's probably a fair comment on that part of Birmingham, especially going through parts of Digbeth. Some of the centre is great up near the Museum/Library, the Gas Basin and the Jewellery Quarter. Other areas like Edgbaston and Morley are leafy and relaxed.
It sound like the new owners need to spend a bit on the ground, or build a new one.
MP - great report, now I am comfortably in my 50s, I do like a taste of the sideways rain, treated like sheep, away day feeling, in a depressed, post-industrial city/town, whilst contrasting it with being sat warm on my sofa, all cosy with Gary, Alan and Shay as simpering company on the telly. The match as it unfolded to me was a great FA Cup Tie, which, due to His Eddiness and NUFC's resolve, I always though we would win in the 90 (or 103), even at 1-0 and 2-1 down. Perceptions are peculiar things: I saw a great game, although not quite the "uncontrollable joy" you mention! Keep up the excellent work.