My journey up to the game was different this week. I met a new mate, fellow bluenose, Will whose company it was my pleasure to share on the 125 miles journey to St Andrews. He lives not far from me and contacted me recently to suggest we meet up and travel together. We went a different way to my usual route which made for a much more interesting trip and it was nice to have someone to talk to on the way up. People say it is a small world and it turns out that Will lived in the same block of flats as my family did in King’s Heath in our respective younger days. Coming through Moseley we saw a creature with knuckles dragging along the floor, moving like Gollum from Lord of the Rings with a face that only a mother could love wearing a Villa shirt. Will offered to run him over but I suggested he did not because the pieces would probably spawn clones. “Good point!” he said and we allowed the apparition to scuttle away around the corner. We got to the ground in plenty of time went for a pint and then went our separate ways to different parts of the ground to find our seats agreeing to meet up after the match.

We both felt that for this game that Alex McCleish would start with a 4-4-2 formation against Bolton Wanderers and get about them. I was disappointed to see that once again we were going to play with a lone striker in the form of Benitez. I believe that I told one bloke I spoke to after the Spurs game who suggested that Chucho should be the lone striker in a 4-5-1 formation that I felt it was a waste of a very good player. I can see no point in Chucho knackering himself against four thugs in the opposition ranks to then have nothing left in the last quarter when the defenders are tired. That is what you use bigger less gifted strikers for. The debate about the formation is the hot topic at the moment and we all have our views on it but what transpired in this match has absolutely nothing to do with how the team was set up. We got ourselves in trouble early on by failing to defend a long throw in properly. I thought their opener was the sort of goal that we had seen the last of for a considerable time to come given how well we had defended of late.

The naivety of the defending was truly breathtaking and there is simply no excuse for allowing one of the most dangerous centre-forwards in the Premier League (Davies) to flick on at the near post and then not win the second ball. Tamir Cohen had a completely free header three yards out that he merely had to divert into the far corner past a helpless Hart who must share a great deal of the responsibility for this debacle. Eight minutes and we are 1 – 0 down. It was to prove the only worthwhile foray forward that Bolton were to make in the first half. They merely proceeded to close our defenders and midfielders down quickly which resulted in us lumping the ball long towards our lone attacker marked by no less a colossus that Zat Knight; no prizes for guessing the outcome of that then! Nevertheless, despite everything, Blues carved out four excellent chances, all of which should have been taken; Tainio, volleyed wide when well placed, Fahey crashed a shot from 15 yards against the bar with the keeper beaten, Jaaskelainen saved brilliantly from a deflection by Cahill from Ferguson’s effort and the same player snatched at his shot on the turn just before half time when the Bolton defence got in a tangle. We were to rue this profligacy because Bolton were not so generous in the second half.

The game could and should have been put beyond us by Lee and then Taylor in the second period who both missed clear chances to score but somehow Blues survived. There is no doubt that Blues enjoyed the lion’s share of the possession throughout and it equated to 57% but Bolton forced Blues to either play it long or cross from deep and whilst Bolton may not be a great side they are big, well organised and defend properly and capably anything that is thrown at them in the air. The crowd started chanting 4-4-2, 4-4-2, 4-4-2 and “we’re supposed to be at home!” O’Connor came on to grant their wish and in desperation Phillips appeared for Vignal so the formation went to 3-4-3. Six minutes from time, the best move of the match occurred with a lovely one-two between Chucho and Phillips resulting in the latter cutting across from the left to send a searing shot into the bottom right hand corner of Jussi Jaaskelainen’s net. This beautiful goal was spoiled by what happened at the restart. Instead of focussing and setting up properly Blues proceeded to switch off and take a snooze. Davies ran straight at our defence from the kick off laid the ball off to Lee who was unceremoniously upended. Matty Taylor stepped up for the free kick at a perfect distance for him. Hart did well in deflecting the shot onto the post. The rebound nine times out of ten would bounce to safety or to a defender. It landed perfectly at the feet of Lee who thought more quickly than our dozy defenders and had time to take a touch, adjust his hair and side foot the ball home from six yards. We had been level for less than two minutes and a deserved draw was thrown away because of inept basic defending and this is the point here. The loss of this game had nothing to do with the formation. The two goals conceded were down to truly awful defensive play of epic proportions just as in the loss to Villa two weeks before. Our relative lack of threat is not helping but you cannot hope to win football matches if you gift the opposition the lead because you allow free headers in your box. At this level mistakes like this will be punished even by limited teams like Bolton. They stifled our game plan and it needed to be changed early on because of that not because we only had one striker. Well done to them, they got their tactics right and we didn’t.

On the way home Will told me a story of a Blues supporter who became more and more morose as the years went by until all expectation and hope was sucked out of him. Then one day God came along and said “mourn not for I have a job for you that is of great importance and for which I can find no other.” “Tell me what it is Oh Lord and I will surely do it rather than watch that load of rubbish each Saturday.” God smiled benevolently and seeing that everything that he hath created was good turned him into the Grim Reaper! Let us hope that he doesn’t come to our last home game of the season eh?

KRO SOTV