Birmingham City vs Sheffield United

English League Cup Round 1 - Wednesday 13th August 2025 - 20:00 - St Andrews
Please keep all discussion related to the match within this thread.

Player Ratings:
Matchday Stats/Player Ratings - https://www.s24su.com/forum/match-day/match/birmingham-city-vs-sheffield-united.754/

Officials:

Referee: Gavin Ward
Assistants: Hugh Gilroy and Emily Carney
Fourth Official: Dean Whitestone

Coverage:

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Live TV Coverage:

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[coolasanidiot]

This squad is absolutely threadbare, Birminghams second string shouldn't be handing out a caning like that to us. Surely the owners must realise their investment is literally decreasing by millions.

We need minimum 6 players IN that are quality, ideally at about 5 million each.

What exactly are they doing? If they weren't going to invest why bother at all.

 

[Greg.]

You just can't have stats like this

 

[RetfordBlade96]

This squad is absolutely threadbare, Birminghams second string shouldn't be handing out a caning like that to us. Surely the owners must realise their investment is literally decreasing by millions.

We need minimum 6 players IN that are quality, ideally at about 5 million each.

What exactly are they doing? If they weren't going to invest why bother at all.

This is what a struggle with… why did they buy the club if they couldn’t afford to invest at all… if it was just a gamble in Jan that wilder would get them to the prem that’s a mad gamble with £100 million

 

[Bladeric]

Very lucky there.Hamer wonder goal but I’m afraid we are f@:*ed

 

[Hillsboro Blade]

I know there were changes. But we were lacking even the basics of cohesion. Giving up possession like Rolf Harris gives up sweets. We were very very poor. We only kept in it because Birmingham players couldn’t finish a Sunday dinner.

This needs to be gripped or we are going to get some right butt-fuckings this season.

And the pigs have won.

Football, just fuck off will you

The Pork have played with more passion, desire and work ethic than ourselves the past two games. We’ve got what we’ve deserved so far this week, sweet fuck all.

 

[Grandmanasty]

If Birminghams intensity and high pressing is how Selles wants us to play then we are a million miles away from it.
Players don’t even seem to know where they’re supposed to be. They were chasing shadows all night, no shape to the team and no organisation.

 

[The Crab]

I can only think this is the manager not so subtly saying to the Board that this is what it looks like without the reinforcements.

Two out of their depth kids at right back and centre back for starters.

It was an awful draw. But having just got back into it with a worldy and a stronger XI than we started it shouldn’t have been too much to have got to pens.

Bindon has pretty much scored two own goals in two games. He’s either very unlucky or he’s not getting up to speed.

Fact is COH made a change and their new era has started with 2 defeats. They had better give him the tools to beat Swansea or they’re in for it very quickly.

We can’t piss away this season while they sit fucking about.

Agree with all of that

 

[Boroblade1889]

A Worldy by Gus doesn’t disguise the fact that was a dogshit performance

 

[bornablade]

Our manager has said that this season we will see fast vertical football with a high press,

We certainly saw that tonight.

Unfortunately it was from Birmingham. We did neither and we couldn't cope with their style of play.

One glimmer of hope is Hamer and Soumare on the pitch together could be something for us to look forward to.

 

[Kenworthy’s Tash]

Tom Cannon hang your head in shame

 

[The Crab]

A Worldy by Gus doesn’t disguise the fact that was a dogshit performance

It was a worldly.

But it should have been disallowed

 

[SB_90]

There’s no real difference from Saturday. We can’t judge Selles until he’s got 3 centre backs in, because right now we’re so weak. RND, Sasnuaskas, and Curtis would be just as out of their depth under Wilder as they are under Selles. If anything, we’re paying the price for not replacing Souttar back in December & for not acting when we all knew we needed replacements for both Robbo & RND in February.

Fair play to Selles for being patient in the market & waiting for quality at the right price but the clock’s ticking. We need at least 2 through the door by the next home game 3 by the end of the window if robbo leaves

 

[utd4ever]

Unsurprising. Our youth team always get rose tinted specs.

Marsh
Curtis
Sasnauskas
One
Et al.

Nowhere near the levels of championship football at this moment in time. Some may get there, most unlikely to. We’ve been blessed in recent years with Peck, Blaster, Brooks, Seriki and this sadly creates expectation.

Not saying this as reactionary to today, there’s a gulf from looking handy in academy football and pre season to looking competent in Championship football.

Also remember they have spent years trained playing Wilderball. This could be a real issue moving forward.

 

[KMC-1889]

Little bit worried that the entire squad have forgotten how to play football.

Are these promotion challenging players really only capable of playing 5 yard passes until it gets to Hamer?

Cannon is somehow even worse than Brewster.

 

[bakeblade]

O Hare Robinson & Soumare did OK

The rest lets be honest a total pile of shit.

Anybody not seeing alarm bells are not football savvy..

O’HARE was crap
P

 

[Ginger Gnome]

Positives are that as rubbish as that was, we only narrowly lost as other Championship teams are kind of shit too.

Preseason we weren't really playing sideways or backwards much but that was all half of them wanted to do tonight, the brief bit where Marsh got the ball a bit further up the pitch and tried dribbling he instantly looked more comfortable than whatever he was doing most of the game and we never tried to use the wise players at all

 

[Rodley]

You just can't have stats like this

View attachment 219183

Regardless of lack of investment, youngsters playing, we are not THAT bad.

 

[AlienWoodward]

The most worrying thing is the body language of the players - looks awful across the board.

Absolutely.
Whatever your thoughts on Robinson he clearly didn't want to be on that pitch tonight.

 

[Tom Bott]

it took a touch off the ref to a birmingham player, then peck won it off him, nonsense from Sky/BBC

ITV called it correctly, good picture quality and Michael Brown on co-coms.
Got the derby game on in November.

Didn't make the game more enjoyable though.

 

[Toronto Blade]

It's on Paramount+ also I think I saw if you have VPN as people have said.

Thankyou I think that from the sounds of it .It was better that I missed it I managed to see the brilliance from Hamer after the game.

 

[MartBlade]

Brewster was just as useless

Brewster had talent but was wrecked by injury. I just don’t see what on earth Cannon offers.

 

[originaltrueblade]

With Cannon on pitch it’s like we’re playing with 10 men

 

[Snowflake]

Tom Cannon hang your head in shame

Why ? He was given no service at all leaving himself to create space and hit the post with a deflection from a defender.
If he was missing chances from crosses or failing to get in when the ball is crossed I would agree with you, but I think we only had two crosses all night and both were poor.

 

[robbiez666]

Dire. I couldn't care less at being out of the cup but that shows our squad is terrible. The kids are barely league standard, let alone will do a job for us.

We lacked a system. we lacked a plan. We lost every fight. We lacked energy. We lacked quality. We had no heart. No desire.

People will come on and say "oh but it was the kids". That's not an excuse. We have come down from the Premier League, they have come up. We changed 1-, they changed 6. This wasn't Birmingham's first team who had 4 times as many chances than us. 20 to 5. And 5 times as many shots on target. They should have thrashed us. No great defending or keeping, just terrible finishing.

Davies: 5 - not at fault for either goal and did well to pull out from a foul/sending off for the first. He just never ever inspires confidence. In his entire time here.
McCallum - 2 - Dreadful. Hard to believe he was in a Norwich play-off team. can't pass. can't defend. can't mark. Can't track.
Robbo - 2 - Got booked and then screamed fuck off at the lino. Should have been sent off. Clearly trying to get sent off. want this whiny plastic scouse cunt as far away from my club as possible. North Wales will do.
Sasnauskus - 1 - Gave them the first goal. Trued to do it again. Looked non-league. Needs to go on loan and show what he's got.
Curtis - 4 - He's barely a L2 player but he was easily our best defender. At least knew where he should be and tried his best
Soumare - 6 - He's far too slow on the ball, but that's the difference in the pace of leagues. That will improve. Otherwise, easily our best player and an impressive debut where he looked very comfortable.
O-Hare - 0 - Appalling. A gnome would have been as useful
Marsh - 2 - So far off this standard. Can do nice things with the ball when he's given as much time as he wants. Otherwise, L2 at best.
One - 1 - Looked like a pub player. Balls bounced off him. Hall went through his legs. Fell over with a gust of wind.
Cannon - 2 - Had one really good shot but everything else was poor.
Ukaki -2 - Looks like he's about 16. lays like he's about 16. put much more effort in than most though.

Subs:

Peck - 3 ran around in circles. sometimes fell over.
Campbell - 3 - Does so little outside of scoring. Watching Stansfield when he came on and he's lightyears ahead of him as a forward player.
Bindon - 2 - Bring back Robbo. bad.
Hamer - 5 - Great goal. not a lot else. Got involved at least
Brooks - not sure he touched the ball.

Selles - 0 - Two games, two zeros. Never been done before. What was that? What was the plan? What was the system? Is someone meant to be tracking their FBs as no one was. Once again they cut through us like a hot knife through butter. Once again no plan B. The formation isn't working but we just kept going with it. Im beginning to question his ability.

 

[Hackey Blade]

Well its not a bad start for selles, bottom of the league and out of the cup in 2 matches, great going.

 

[Shawy24]

Sam Curtis is giving me Daryl Westlake flashbacks

Selles is giving me David Weir flashbacks. Waste of a season and more money down the drain in a pay off. Problem is that COH will probably let it go on until we slide back to League 1.

 

[Railway Blade]

Eight players 21 or under played a part in that game for us and two others only 22.

You can't play that many all at once and expect to be competitive so not too worried about that result.

Soumare was a big bonus, once match fit he will be ideal.

I am worried about the lack of squad depth and genuine starters but I'm guessing the manager is too.

Recruitment really needs to step up now but I'm starting to get that uneasy feeling that it will be minimal. Hope I'm wrong and we see 5 or so quality players through the door in the next few weeks.

 

[Addison]

It wasnt the disaster I thought it would be. The youngsters Dovy, Curtis and Marsh get a free pass they battled manfully till the end. It was the so called senior players that were the let down. Davies is shocking as a number 2. His refusal to come off his line led to Brums pressure from set pieces. The defenders dont trust him. JLT looked like he wanted to get sent off he needs to go asap. Yes a wonder goal from Hamer and after we played some decent pockets but we always looked vulnerable to the quick break a feature of the system we are playing. Canon what is there to say he hit the post but did he doing anything other for the rest of the game. Peck is nots a senior but his languid style slow with the ball at his feet got himself into trouble on too many occasions. Begs the question is all not well with him

Is there any plus side well Soumare looked useful and he could do well if we bring in players to complement him. Thats the problem they are not being brought in and thats at the door of a silent Board who are not supporting the manager. We also managed to avoid extra time saving legs for Swansea but small compensation. I said after Saturday teams that cant defend go down. Ive seen little to change that view and begs the question just what exactly do the new owners want from this season. It cant be promotion. There is no sign of any activity to redress what is turning into a poor start to the season. They appear to be treading treacle and the concern that they lack the ability, experience and knowledge to manage an EPL football club will only grow as the days without significant incomings and defeats grow.

 

[SufcBilly]

Thought we were class tonight

 

[originaltrueblade]

Why ? He was given no service at all leaving himself to create space and hit the post with a deflection from a defender.
If he was missing chances from crosses or failing to get in when the ball is crossed I would agree with you, but I think we only had two crosses all night and both were poor.

He never chased a ball down in box he could have got it just looked on waste of space get rid in this window he’s useless