A measly crowd of 15,854 watched Birmingham pick up a valuable win to help push there promotion bid and close the gap behind the leaders to 6 points with 2 games in hand of leaders Derby County. It was a fairly subdued atmosphere around the ground as i'm sure the fans just wanted them to get back on track.. Now they've done that, hopefully it can just get better.

The growth of the youngsters is getting better week by week. Seb Larsson & Niklas Bendtner just seem to be coming on leaps and bounds as the season end is drawing close.

It was a game about who could battle to most.. With both teams looking for points to push on to the playoffs or even automatic promotion. Birmingham mainly seemed to be passing it around the defence "England Style" and going absolutely nowhere.. Bendtner carved out the best chance of the first half, as he chested a cross down and vollyed it straight at the keeper who managed to parry it over the cross bar. Could and should of probably been the opening goal of the game.

The goal came as a good ball from the right hand side by Bendtner and was met by Gary McSheffrey who cooly finished from 6 yards out. That goal was McSheffrey's 13th goal of the season, we could sure do with another 13 from you yet Gary..

After the goal, nothing else happened.. Only a cross/shot from Larsson which just skimmed the cross bar which had the Stoke keeper scrambling back.

Overall, a good gritty performance from the blues.. Stoke rarely threatened but i'd say they should just about reach the playoffs.

Match Ratings.

Colin Doyle - 6/10

Bruno N'Gotty - 7/10

Mat Sadler - 6/10

Martin Taylor - 7/10

Radhi Jaidi - 6/10

Damien Johnson - 6/10

Stephen Clemence - 7/10

Fabrice Muamba - 6/10

Gary McSheffrey - 9/10 (MOTM)

Nicklas Bendtner - 7/10

Cameron Jerome - 6/10

Seb Larsson - 8/10

Rowan Vine - 7/10

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