Lee Bowyer addresses how Birmingham City hit for six by Blackpool

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match report

Wouldn’t you know it, you come to the seaside for a nice Bank Holiday day out and it rains.

The sun shone in Blackpool, but chants of ‘not fit to wear the shirt’ poured from the stands on to the Bloomfield Road pitch as Birmingham City crashed 6-1. Not once, nor twice – but three times as 3,500 traveling fans let their feelings be known.

Most aimed their frustration at the players, some at manager Lee Bowyer, but all seemed united in their conviction that under the current owners success would be impossible for Blues. For every ‘not fit to wear the shirt’ there were multiple renditions of ‘we want our club back’.

Blues made the worst possible start, going behind after three minutes to the first goal of Jake Beesley’s Blackpool career. The game was up after a quarter of an hour when CJ Hamilton came off his wing and made it 2-0. The left side of Blues’ defense was a turntile.

Onel Hernandez, Blues’ best attacker, was shackled to a wing-back berth and charged to do the defending to which he is not suited. Not that Kristian Pedersen playing behind him did much better.

That prompted Bowyer into a change of system, four at the back and Hernandez installed just behind the strikers. It paid immediate dividends and might have produced a goal as the Blackpool defense suddenly had something to worry about. The game was open, Blues were vulnerable on the counter, but at least they were asking questions in attack. If Hernandez never plays wing back again it’ll be too soon.

But that wasn’t the only problem here. Blues look a dispirited, disjointed and tired rabble as the season comes to an end. Ironically on a day when Barnsley’s defeat to Peterborough guaranteed their safety in the Championship for another year, it’s difficult not to wonder if next season will be like the five or six that have gone immediately before.

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What Lee Bowyer said

“That’s the darkest day I have experienced in my whole football career,” he said. “That was not acceptable from start to finish. I would never associate myself with quitting and failing in that way. I am in charge here. I am the one that stands there in front of the players, I pick the team, pick the shape , but that had nothing to do with today’s result.

“I have never experienced – playing and the manager side – your own fans singing what they were singing, and they had every right to sing what they sung. It wasn’t acceptable. That’s the worst day I have ever had in football.

“They [Blackpool] had fight, they had passion, they care – their players. This ain’t just today. I have said before we are papering over cracks that have been there a long, long time. And when I say to you I am getting blood out of a stone, sometimes I have said that after games.

“Now you have just witnessed. This has been a problem for years, before I came. It ain’t going to get changed quickly. It wasn’t acceptable from start to finish. They were more hungry than us. There are so many things that are wrong with what is going on but there is no excuse for coming second best all over the pitch and not fighting for this football club.”

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Bowyer’s future

“I would be stupid to think that my job is as safe as I think it should be. We have conceded ten goals in two games but this is the hand that I am dealt. Obviously people upstairs ain’t going to be happy and they have every right – I don’t disagree.

“What we have just seen, especially today is not acceptable and I stand there in front of the players and take full responsibility – full responsibility. So if the owners want to have a conversation with me and tell me to move on then I will move we.

“I never associate myself as a quitter, that will never change, that’s the person I am. You have to remember I have played for this club and everybody knows me. Those fans know who I am and what I am, I am a winner and a fighter and that will never change.

“But the players step across the line, they have to go home and take a good hard look at themselves because there is only so much I can control. If they want to stroll around and think we are better than what we actually are then I can’t control that.

“I will be here for as long as wanted because I care about the club – that’s why I came. For as long as I am wanted here I will carry on fighting – that will never stop for me. That’s the way I am.”

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What the fans said

Kofi Blake: Nine goals conceded in three days.

Paklander1875: This is just embarrassing.

AnglorumR: Signing off now, ashamed.

dave20581783: Complete and utter embarrassment.

Christopher Peake: Pathetic.

Jimmy James: Disgraceful.

Anthony Salerno: Etheridge! Come back! Quick!

_RhysBCFC: Shambles of a team.

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Up next

Lee Bowyer’s side will be in action this Saturday as they host Millwall at St Andrew’s (3pm kick off).

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