Wolves 1 – 1 Birmingham. You can’t always get what you want.

By: Toby | November 29th, 2008

Goodness me, this is the first game I’ve had to write about that hasn’t been a win, you’ll have to bear with me, it might take some time for me to adapt to not putting “win” and “won” in everywhere. In my little poll earlier, looks like 7.69% of you got it right…must.try.harder.

Prior to this game, I’ve not known there to be so much worry, so many pre, post and in game discussions about the form of another side. This kind of frantic worry is usually associated with us lurking below the play-offs with no sign of getting into the top six, not being 6 points clear at the top of the Championship. My dad rang me three times during the Sheffield game, not about the game itself, moreover about the injuries and their impact on today’s game, this season has been one long bout of tunnel vision. Ever since Wolves and Birmingham rooted themselves at the summit of the Championship, every game between the two of them has resulted in a bout of mental maths, working out points difference, goal difference….with no real head to head to go by these were all we had to go by, that all changed today, now we know what we’re up against. The results are in boys, and they make for…well…indifferent reading?

It was all a bit hit and miss for both sides in the first 45, with the highlighted dangermen not really getting into the game as much as we’d all thought they would, we were expecting fireworks and all we got really was a bit of a misfiring start stop of a game. Both team threatened, yet neither carried through the pre match promise of a free scoring orgy. They took on the roles of fighters eying each other up, working one another out…never willing to throw the first blow. This was typified with Phillip’s, many a Blues fan’s first scorer being taken off at half time, with his replacement Jerome grabbing the first goal of the afternoon with a well taken goal driven in from the edge of the box. It was another fan’s favourite for a goal today, and recent scoring machine Chris Iwelumo who was next to be taken off, not quite finding his touch all afternoon, and hampered by the referee deciding that because he was tall he was fouling the Birmingham man, whenever he won the ball. It was a frustrating early afternoon. Most frustrating was the fact that Wolves didn’t really kick into gear until they went behind, which hasn’t been the way of Wolves for a long while, and it was depressing to see.

Mind you…it brought about the exact response we were after, with fine determination from both Stephen Ward (surely one of the unsung heroes of the season) and Ebanks Blake with the two combining to bundle Wolves back into the game with fifteen minutes to go. Wolves were surging forward and Birmingham were increasingly catching us on the break, it was too and fro and the combined nerves of every Wolves fan could be felt reverberating through every kick of the ball. A game on the knife edge, you felt all it needed was one moment, a flash of quality to end it. Collective hearts dropped when Ridgewell looked to have won it for Birmingham, only for his effort to be ruled out due to a handball. Yet another sigh of relief. Stearman and Jerome carried out their own battle for the last fifteen minutes, each player taking chunks out of the other, Jerome was smartly alternating how hard he went in for challenges, sometimes hard, knocking Stearman off the ball with ease, sometimes soft, so that when Stearman went in strongly in return he won a free-kick.

At the end of the game, either team could have won it, yet it would have been hard on both teams to lose a game where both played football with guts and heart. We retain our 6 point lead at the top, we’ll have to see what Reading can do on Monday and see if they can close down the gap between themselves and Birmingham, if anything, it was Birmingham who lost in this game, and if Reading do win their game, their woes will be compounded.

So there we are, 6 points clear at the top of the Championship going into December? Would you have taken those stats 3 games ago? I know I would.

Tarra-a-bit.