![\"birmingham](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/skysports-birmingham-city_6998959.jpg\")
<\/p>\nBirmingham claimed their first home league victory of the season with a narrow 1-0 triumph over Oxford thanks to Paik Seung-ho’s winner.<\/p>\n
The South Korea international struck just before the interval, converting Ethan Laird’s centre to inflict a third successive Sky Bet Championship defeat on Gary Rowett’s outfit.<\/p>\n
Paik’s effort was sufficient to separate the two teams and maintain the hosts’ unbeaten start to the campaign.<\/p>\n
The visitors had already been beaten by a single goal, and the pattern was extended.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Oxford boss Rowett was making a return to the club where he spent three seasons as a player and managed Birmingham in two different spells.<\/p>\n
The last time he was at St. Andrew’s @ Knighthead Park in a professional capacity was the final day of the 2023-24 campaign when the Blues were relegated to the third tier.<\/p>\n
But the club has been rebuilt under new boss Chris Davies and the momentum has carried over into this season.<\/p>\n
Oxford’s best moments came during the opening exchanges and it took a fine save from Ryan Allsop to prevent Cameron Brannagan from firing them into a 16th-minute lead with a drive from the edge of the area.<\/p>\n
But the clearest chances of the opening half fell to Kyogo Furuhashi.<\/p>\n
The Japanese forward, signed from Rennes for an undisclosed fee this summer, was presented with two clear, yet very different, opportunities.<\/p>\n
He side-footed wide after Willum Willumsson sliced the U’s defence wide open, and he then nodded over from inside the six-yard box after a cross from the left by Demarai Gray.<\/p>\n
Birmingham finally made their pressure count four minutes before the interval.<\/p>\n
Laird, deputising at left-back for Alex Cochrane who picked up an injury during last week’s victory at Blackburn, drove down the outside.<\/p>\n
Paik hung back as the former Manchester United man crossed low into the area and his first-time shot travelled through a couple of yellow-shirted bodies and across Jamie Cumming into the corner of the net.<\/p>\n
After the break, Birmingham dominated possession without creating too much in terms of forcing Cumming into direct action.<\/p>\n
Gray saw one fierce drive deflect over the crossbar, but Allsop in the home goal was a virtual spectator until stoppage time when Oxford almost grabbed an equaliser.<\/p>\n
Substitute Stan Mills fed the ball in from the right and Mark Harris reacted first, only for his side-foot finish to fly the wrong side of the upright.<\/p>\n
The managers<\/p>\n
Birmingham’s Chris Davies:<\/p>\n
To follow…<\/p>\n
Oxford’s Gary Rowett:<\/p>\n
To follow…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Birmingham claimed their first home league victory of the season with a narrow 1-0 triumph over Oxford thanks…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":367709,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7820],"tags":[855,748,393,4884,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-367708","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-birmingham","8":"tag-birmingham","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115079168957441080","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367708","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=367708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367708\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/367709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}