![\"Alex](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Alex-Dicken-Birmingham-Mail.jpg\")
<\/p>\nAlex Dicken lists his talking points from Birmingham City’s penultimate pre-season friendly against Port Vale<\/p>\n
Birmingham City reporter for BirminghamLive and the Birmingham Mail<\/p>\n
![\"Kyogo](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/0_JS376293649.jpg\")
Kyogo Furuhashi in action for Birmingham City(Image: Phil Bryan\/Shutterstock)<\/p>\n
A full strength Birmingham City side breezed to a 2-0 victory at Port Vale on Saturday<\/a> in their penultimate pre-season friendly.<\/p>\n Chris Davies<\/a> fielded five new signings in his starting XI but it was two of last season\u2019s regulars who bagged the goals.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Blues<\/a> only have next weekend\u2019s game against Nottingham Forest to come before they open the Championship season against promotion favourites Ipswich Town.<\/p>\n Blues need to work with Kyogo<\/strong><\/p>\n There are no guarantees that Kyogo Furuhashi<\/a> will come to the Championship and replicate the stunning goal-scoring statistics that he recorded at Celtic.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Once again Kyogo made some decisive movements during a 65-minute outing against Port Vale without troubling home goalkeeper Marko Marosi.<\/p>\n Even with the creative powers of Tommy Doyle behind him, Kyogo wasn\u2019t presented with an opportunity to work Marosi. Quite clearly Blues\u2019 players aren\u2019t quite on the same wavelength as Kyogo just yet.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Battles are being won<\/strong><\/p>\n 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\u2019 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.<\/p>\n That tells us the bulk of yesterday\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Set pieces need work<\/strong><\/p>\n Davies is keen to improve Blues\u2019 output from set pieces and they looked a little shaky in the first half at Vale Park.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Klarer was the only player above six-feet tall in Blues\u2019 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.<\/p>\n Allsop punished by new rule<\/strong><\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Allsop took longer than eight seconds to release the ball and Vale were awarded a corner in the second half.<\/p>\n 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\u2019 favour, despite it going against them here.<\/p>\n Are you confident going into the season opener? Let us know your thoughts HERE<\/a>Get the latest Blues headlines sent straight to your phone<\/p>\n BirminghamLive has its very own Birmingham City<\/a> WhatsApp community to deliver the latest headlines straight to your phone. Just click this link<\/a> to receive daily Blues content and breaking news. We also treat our community members to special offers, promotions, and adverts from us and our partners. If you don\u2019t like our community, you can check out any time you like. Click on the name at the top of your screen while in WhatsApp and click ‘Exit Group’. Read our Privacy Notice.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alex Dicken lists his talking points from Birmingham City’s penultimate pre-season friendly against Port Vale Birmingham City reporter…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":295638,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7820],"tags":[855,1205,6452,748,8372,393,4884,10109,7821,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-295637","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-birmingham","8":"tag-birmingham","9":"tag-birmingham-city-fc","10":"tag-bright-osayi-samuel","11":"tag-britain","12":"tag-chris-davies-football-coach","13":"tag-england","14":"tag-great-britain","15":"tag-kyogo-furuhashi","16":"tag-ryan-allsop","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114924741545967799","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295637\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Bright](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/0_JS376294345.jpg\")
Bright Osayi-Samuel of Birmingham City(Image: Phil Bryan\/Shutterstock)<\/p>\n