Alex Dicken lists his talking points from Birmingham City’s penultimate pre-season friendly against Port Vale
Birmingham City reporter for BirminghamLive and the Birmingham Mail
Kyogo Furuhashi in action for Birmingham City(Image: Phil Bryan/Shutterstock)
A full strength Birmingham City side breezed to a 2-0 victory at Port Vale on Saturday in their penultimate pre-season friendly.
Chris Davies fielded five new signings in his starting XI but it was two of last season’s regulars who bagged the goals.
Keshi Anderson opened the scoring with his second pre-season strike before Willum Willumsson stepped off the bench in the second half to fire home right-footed.
Blues only have next weekend’s game against Nottingham Forest to come before they open the Championship season against promotion favourites Ipswich Town.
Blues need to work with Kyogo
There are no guarantees that Kyogo Furuhashi will come to the Championship and replicate the stunning goal-scoring statistics that he recorded at Celtic.
It is rare for a striker to score 20-plus goals in the Championship these days so anywhere close to that figure would make the transfer deal worthwhile for Blues.
Once again Kyogo made some decisive movements during a 65-minute outing against Port Vale without troubling home goalkeeper Marko Marosi.
Even with the creative powers of Tommy Doyle behind him, Kyogo wasn’t presented with an opportunity to work Marosi. Quite clearly Blues’ players aren’t quite on the same wavelength as Kyogo just yet.
The question is are they just not finding him, or is he not making the right runs. That is an issue Davies will hope to iron out over the next two weeks.
Battles are being won
In the penultimate friendly last year Davies fielded the XI that would have started the League One opener had it not been for Jordan James’ transfer to Rennes. Ten of the 11 players that started against Walsall two weeks out from the start of the 2024/25 campaign started against Reading.
That tells us the bulk of yesterday’s starters are in line to feature against Ipswich. Admittedly, some are only in pole position because of injuries to Phil Neumann, Paik Seung-ho and Jay Stansfield.
Two intriguing battles which appear to be edging one way are those between Ryan Allsop and James Beadle for the goalkeeping spot and Bright Osayi-Samuel and Ethan Laird at right-back.
Allsop and Osayi-Samuel started at Vale, Beadle shipped three behind the kids at Northampton and Laird replaced his rival for the final 25 minutes.
Bright Osayi-Samuel of Birmingham City(Image: Phil Bryan/Shutterstock)
Set pieces need work
Davies is keen to improve Blues’ output from set pieces and they looked a little shaky in the first half at Vale Park.
Blues approach set pieces in the modern way with three ball-winners positioned zonally along the six-yard line and the rest expected to mark man-to-man. Osayi-Samuel covered the near post, Christoph Klarer occupied the central zone and Eiran Cashin was at the back post.
Klarer was the only player above six-feet tall in Blues’ starting XI and it showed at times. Vale created panic from corners and George Byers should have found the net with one near-post header after ghosting in behind Osayi-Samuel.
Allsop punished by new rule
Davies has been relishing the new rule to prevent goalkeepers from time-wasting coming into play so there was a tinge of irony that his goalkeeper was punished for doing it at Vale.
Allsop took longer than eight seconds to release the ball and Vale were awarded a corner in the second half.
The good thing is that Allsop has been punished in pre-season, not a competitive fixture, and will now be aware that referees are planning to enforce a rule that should largely work in Blues’ favour, despite it going against them here.
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