St Andrew's: Birmingham City 1-1 Reading

Wednesday 12 December 2007

Birmingham City 1-1 Reading

Aerial shot of St Andrews (Bing Maps)

Ratings

Overall Ground Quality : 8/10

Ease of getting there : 7/10

Atmosphere : 8/10

Programme : 8/10

View of Action : 6/10

Quality of the game : 6/10

The "football" feeling : 6/10

Chances of coming here for a random game : 6/10

Legroom : 7/10

Surrounding area : 5/10

Overall : 67/100

Spion Kop

Birmingham City Skyline

Main Stand

Main reception

Railway End

Main Stand and Railway End

Tilton Road End

Main Stand

Railway End

Birmingham City FC

Railway End

Spion Kop

Birmingham City Skyline

Main Stand and Tilton Road End

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Birmingham City 3-0 Hull City

As we approach the last few months of the season, many teams are battling for vital points whether they are challenging for promotion or scrapping to avoid relegation. Towards the bottom end of The Championship, Birmingham City and Hull City have significantly underachieved which currently sees both teams still aiming to reach the 50-points safety target.

Birmingham City started the season with ambitions to target promotion under footballing veteran, Harry Redknapp, who overhauled the entire squad by signing 25 players and clearing out 23 players in the summer. The attitude of chopping and changing continued throughout the club with Blue’s now recently appointing their 3^rd manager of the season (excluding Lee Carsley who took charge as caretaker manager).

Following relegation from the Premier League, Hull City have found it difficult adjusting to life in The Championship. With ambitions for an immediate return to the Premier League, the Tigers, during the summer transfer window, also made many wholesale changes to their squad. Their underachievement this season saw them part company with Leonid Slutsky and appoint Nigel Adkins in December. Over the past few years, both football clubs have been victims of mismanaged ownership and they are both still paying the price for this.

Going into this match, Hull were in fine form winning 3 out of their last 5 matches whilst Birmingham had won just 1 out of their last 5 matches. Birmingham City urged their supporters to get behind the team by reducing tickets to £10 for this match. A ticket offer like this even tempted the likes of myself (Ross) to travel to ‘Peaky Blinders’ country for the afternoon.

I left home at around 12:30pm and was parked up by 1:15pm on Lower Dartmouth Street. The walk to St Andrew’s took only a few minutes where I began taking photos outside in the mid-March sunshine (this didn’t last long!).

Just before 2pm, the weather turned bleak and cold (similar to both teams this season!) and it soon started to snow heavily. At this stage, I decided to go inside keeping out of the snow. I soon found that this didn’t help as snow, whirling around St Andrew’s, also blew into the stands, covering many supporters.

Blues moved to St Andrew’s in 1906 replacing their former Muntz Road ground. St Andrew's could originally hold an estimated 75,000 spectators, housed in one grandstand and a large uncovered terrace. During the Second World War, St Andrew's suffered bomb damage and the grandstand burned down in an accidental fire. In the 1950s, the club made improvements to their ground with the replacement of the grandstand, installation of floodlights, building a second small stand and covering the open terraces with a new roof. The ground very much remained unchanged up to the mid-1990’s. Improvement plans were soon brought forward following the death of a boy when a wall collapsed during rioting in the 1980s. When then new owners, David Sullivan and David Gold, took the club out of administration in 1993, they began a six-year redevelopment programme during which the ground was converted to an all-seater stadium to comply with the Taylor Report, and all areas apart from the Main Stand were completely rebuilt. The seating capacity of the modern stadium is now around 30,000.

Prior to kick off, a heavy snow fall suddenly covered the pitch as well as many Blue Nose’s in the stands (well Red Noses considering the cold weather!) which is incredible considering we are already in mid-March. Don’t put that yellow football away just yet!

Blues took an early lead through Jota's sharp finish after a neat pass from Che Adams. Adams doubled the home side's lead when his looping cross went over Tigers goalkeeper Allan McGregor. Jota latched onto a loose ball to make it 3-0 and secured Birmingham's first win since beating Sheffield Wednesday on 3^rd February. Victory for Blues ended a run of seven successive defeats and saw them draw level on points with 21st-placed Barnsley, but they remain in the relegation zone on goal difference. The scoreline could have been even worse for Hull, who had won their previous two matches, but for some excellent saves from McGregor. The Tigers offered next to nothing all afternoon and are now just six points above the bottom three.

A really enjoyable afternoon out in the bitterly cold West Midlands with a performance that will encourage many Blues supporters as we approach the end of the season. Standout performances by Birmingham’s Jota and Che Adams has now turning up the heat on league rivals Barnsley who were defeated at home to an inform Millwall side. A vital win for Blues against the toothless Tigers.

Birmingham City 1-1 Reading

Birmingham City were selling cheap match tickets to create a big atmosphere for their new manager Alex MacLeish, so we seized the opportunity of a visit to a full St Andrews to see the glamorous Premier League, Birmingham City verses Reading!

As Adrian was Tamworth based, I (Ross) met him half way at Measham and from there we travelled down the M42 to Birmingham.
Because of the big attendance we parked up early on Garrison Lane, only a two minute walk from St Andrews. Lunch was next on the agenda which was to be a nearby MacDonald’s near the ground overlooking the A45 and the Birmingham skyline from a distance.
St Andrews is a historic ground which once claimed to of had a "gypsy's curse". The oldest stand is of course the Main stand, which was built in 1952. The stand has two tiers of seats and executive boxes in between the tiers. In the mid 1990's, the two joined stands, the Tilton Road End and Spion Kop were built which replaced a huge terrace. The final re-development was the Railway End which was opened in February 1999 which has two tiers. Away supporters are located in the lower tier to the left and the top tier is called "The Olympic Gallery".
The full house generated a good atmosphere but the home fans left slightly disappointed as their beloved Blues were held to a 1-1 draw. Goals scored by Mikael Forssell for Birmingham and then Stephen Hunt’s penalty for Reading.
Following the final whistle we as normal beat the majority in leaving the stadium and made a quick departure away from the Small Heath area.
We left Birmingham on the heartlands spine route to Castle Bromwich, back onto the M6 briefly before heading North East towards North West Leicestershire on the M42.
The West Midlands is a relatively easy journey for me and I was back at home in Coalville for just after 6pm.