It was end to end stuff today at St Andrews in the 10th West Midlands local derby of the season and goals by the two centre halfs, Roger Johnson for Blues and James Collins for Villa, settling the final score at 1-1.
Villa may be the happier side with their point away from home after pressure mounted on them to equalize in the cauldron of St Andrews. The point means they have climbed out of the relegation zone whilst keeping their 2nd place in the Braggers' League table.
Birmingham's form in the derbies this season continues to be poor with just two points gained from 5 local derbies. These are the results from the 10 West Midlands derbies in the Premiership thus far this season:
Blues 1 Villa 1
Wolves 1 Blues 0
Villa 2 Albion 1
Albion 0 Stoke 3
Stoke 3 Blues 2
Villa 0 Blues 0
Wolves 1 Villa 2
Albion 3 Blues 1
Stoke 2 Villa 1
Wolves 2 Stoke 1
Bonus points
Whilst bagging a bonus point for their streaker this afternoon, Blues would be docked points for a case of "empty seats m'lud, empty seats", with 4,000 unsold seats resulting in huge gaps in the stands on Match of the Day. This was in spite of an allocation of only 1500 seats to Villa supporters. Not great for a derby. Clubs should be able to ensure the safety of supporters without banning away fans and then not even being able to fill the reusultant gaps with home fans. This is small club mentality from Birmingham City who clearly have a problem with stewarding St Andrews and I speak from the experience of having plastic seats raining down on me and my children from the top tier of the Railway End housing home fans who were also kicking down their own safety barriers on the pitch in front of us at the end of our last encounter, whilst freelance stewards who admitted to me that they had never been in St Andrews before in their lives stood by looking as helpless and scared as we felt.
Apparently two flares managed to get through the turnstiles again today and security men only made themselves known after the streaker managed to take off his kit and leap onto the pitch. If Blues are to continue playing Premiership football next season, they need to put the amateurish Brady Bunch / Trevor Francis 'toys out of pram' days behind them and start behaving with a bit more class. Birmingham are fast becoming the Milwall of the West Midlands. 5 bonus points docked.
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