Birmingham City reminds me of the opening line from A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens. It is the best of times on the pitch, the team is unbeaten in the last 11 games and has won the last 4. Off the pitch, it doesn’t seem so good. Continue reading
Category Archives: Blues Trust
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is an amazing kaleidoscope of tall buildings, mass transit trains, trams, buses, cars, handcarts and people. There are lots of people in a hurry, going places, but there are also small parks dotted around the city for those who want to pause and be refreshed. There’s food, glorious food including some I fancied, the papaya and red onion salad was a favourite, and food that I didn’t try such as seahorses. Continue reading
Exhaustion and exhilaration
The game on Saturday reminded me of why I love football. When I watch a game like that, I forget about everything else for a couple of hours. That everything else includes more important concerns and it’s good to get a break from thinking about them. Over twenty years ago, I went through a very difficult period, when I had serious concerns about the health and well-being of the two people I loved most in the world. The only break I got from worrying about them was watching football; watching Birmingham City play took my complete capacity for worrying and I forgot about everything else. Continue reading
Where are we heading?
I’m not the only one to doubt the wisdom of sacking Gary Rowett. The headline in WSC said, “Gary Rowett wasn’t perfect but Birmingham’s move for Zola makes no sense”. Continue reading
Wristicapped
Posts on this blog will continue to be short and sporadic this season. As always I have too many other things to do and I have an additional handicap at present – a broken wrist. Continue reading
Going round in circles
Life is like the outer circle bus route; you wait ages for a number 11 to come and then three come along in convoy. With buses you can just get on one of them but you can’t do that in life when several different things are demanding your attention. You just have to hop from one activity to another and can end up going in circles. Continue reading
Interesting times
It looks as though the next couple of weeks could be interesting for Birmingham City, both on and off the pitch. In tomorrow’s game, we will see how Rowett reacts to last weekend’s loss: who he puts in the team and how they play. I’d like to see Zigic in the squad and coming on as a sub. He would get a good reception: fans were singing his name at Blackpool and he wasn’t even there. Continue reading
More change needed
On Tuesday evening it felt as though everything had changed for Birmingham City. It had only been a couple of weeks since one manager was sacked and eight days since a new one was appointed. Our previous home game on October 25th had ended 0 – 8, utter humiliation, but hope was renewed following our no-score draw away on November 1st. The crowd too was transformed, from miserable silence to loud support. I stayed to the end of the Bournemouth game because the team that had capitulated were my team and I felt I needed to be there as long as they were on the pitch. On Tuesday night, I stayed because I wanted to. Continue reading
What can we do?
Before I add to the torrent of comment in reaction to Birmingham City’s 0-8 loss on Saturday, I’d like to remind readers that this is a personal blog. The opinions expressed are mine alone and don’t represent the views of any organisations to which I belong. Continue reading
Not all bad
Giving advice?
Birmingham City’s loss to Charlton on Saturday was pretty bad. Even I started yelling advice to the players and my knowledge of football techniques and tactics is minimal. I probably should be grateful that I only notice the most glaring of errors. Watching a game like that must be more painful for those who understand more. Continue reading
Success isn’t everything
Defeated by Stoke – beaten but unbowed
I enjoyed watching Birmingham City’s loss to Stoke1 far more than some of the games they’ve won. Michael Johnson2 said it was one of the best games he’d seen. The stadium was less than half full (10,445 home, 2991 away) but the Blues fans filled it with noise as they passionately supported the team. It’s a ragbag of assorted players that other clubs don’t want but they are our players and have shown great commitment and effort. I wouldn’t swop them for more talented players who didn’t care about the club. For me, success is less important than a bond between club and supporters, a feeling that this is my club. Continue reading
Should you trust the trust?
“Yes and no,” is my answer to the question in the title. Continue reading
#BCFCACV – the value of connecting at St Andrew’s
I think that the Blues Trust #BCFCACV Twitter campaign is a good idea but I’m too old for Twitter. Everything I want to say about football grounds as assets of community value requires more than 140 characters to say it. Continue reading
Something should be done: Part 1
A lot of Birmingham City supporters seem to agree that something should be done to protest about the current plight of our club. Most of them seem to mean, “Somebody else should do something,” and have various reasons why they themselves can’t organise anything. I’m sure that many of those reasons are perfectly valid; we all have lives and some things are more important than football. So I’m not writing this to condemn anyone who is not organising a protest; in fact having several thousand people organising protests would probably be far worse than having nobody do it. Continue reading
Talking it over
Blues Trust is to be commended for arranging a time to talk things over with anyone who wants to turn up at the George on Saturday.1 Not all fans will commend them, of course, but it’s hard to think of anything that all Blues fans would agree on. Continue reading