Birmingham City played out a 1-1 draw with Ipswich Town on Friday night
Birmingham City reporter for BirminghamLive and the Birmingham Mail
Birmingham City’s Kyogo Furuhashi in action against Ipswich
The dawn of the new Championship season at St Andrew’s was marred by controversy as Birmingham City were denied by a stoppage time penalty.
George Hirst converted in the 95th minute to cancel out Jay Stansfield’s opener and stop Blues from recording what would have been a deserved victory against Ipswich Town.
Andrew Kitchen adjudged Lyndon Dykes to have handled the ball at an Ipswich corner and he didn’t get much else right on a bad night for the referee.
Here are our talking points after Blues start with a point…
Blues match the favourites
The first game of the season is rarely going to be free-flowing, fantastic football. There is plenty of time for that.
Blues matched the enthusiasm of a white-hot St Andrew’s crowd to create the better openings and keep Ipswich, who many fancy as the favourites for promotion, at bay before the controversial penalty award.
Other than a chance for Sammie Szmodics in the first half which was all of Ryan Allsop’s own doing and the debatable penalty, Ipswich barely laid a glove on Blues. Big money signings from their Premier League days Szmodics and Jack Clarke were well handled by a Blues team that looks capable of keeping clean sheets once again.
While the result will bug Blues for at least a few days, the performance showed the Championship that they have the potential to live up to their billing.
Kyogo can play a bit
Davies caught everyone off guard by starting Kyogo Furuhashi at centre-forward in place of Tommy Doyle, who was arguably Blues’ best player in pre-season.
We saw why inside seven minutes when Kyogo burst in behind, tussled with Jacob Greaves, before instinctively lobbing the ball over Alex Palmer in front of The Tilton.
That should have been the way he announced his arrival in English football but referee Andrew Kitchen had other ideas and pulled play back for a foul. The contact between the diminutive Kyogo and 6ft 4in Ipswich defender Greaves was minimal, yet Kitchen was convinced.
The referee’s performance was less than convincing (more on that later), whereas Kyogo was exactly that.
After three pre-season outings in which he appeared to be operating on a different wavelength to his teammates, Kyogo got within range in time for Ipswich.
He was constantly spinning and moving, looking to stretch Ipswich’s back-line to create chances for himself and space for others.
In addition to the goal that he didn’t officially score, Kyogo also hit the woodwork in the build-up to Stansfield’s goal with a similar lobbed effort. As far as debuts go, this was promising.
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Osayi-Samuel deserves a mention too
Bright Osayi-Samuel has won the Royal Rumble at right-back with Ethan Laird and we have just seen why.
The Nigeria international claimed Sky Sports’ Man of the Match for an all-action display and proved to be popular with the crowd. St Andrew’s loves players who stand their ground and Osayi-Samuel did that when Jack Taylor fronted him up in the first half.
Those on the terraces kept Osayi-Samuel going when his body tried to give in.
“It was amazing,” said Osayi-Samuel. “I enjoyed it and the fans gave me that extra push. I had cramp at about 60 minutes but the fans pushed me to carry on to the end.”
Bright Osayi-Samuel of Birmingham City
The referees don’t get better
Too many games last season included controversial decisions from referees and Blues might have gone up a level but the standard of officiating hasn’t improved on this evidence.
Andrew Kitchen is an experienced Championship referee who occasionally stepped up to Premier League level last season, but he ruined Friday night’s game.
Not only did Kitchen harshly adjudge Kyogo to have unfairly outmuscled Greaves, the referee needlessly involved himself in stoppage time to award Ipswich a penalty.
Throw in the award of a free-kick against Paik Seung-ho for a perfectly timed tackle on Jack Clarke in the first half, plus Kitchen’s general need to blow up every few minutes, and you can understand why he was booed off at full-time.