Birmingham City (h), The ACN Review

Biggest positive

Grinding out a win when it looked like it might never come, spells of slick passing, creating a fair few decent chances against a stubborn defence and never really looking in danger of conceding apart from…

 Weekend whinge

 … the bit between the goal and the final whistle when we completely went to pieces, leaving huge gaps despite the man advantage, and could quite easily have let in what would have been a very frustrating equaliser.

Moment of the match

Adam Clayton’s sending off and our fast response to it. Given how solid Birmingham were for most of the game, even allowing just another few seconds for them to properly organise themselves might have been enough for their ten men to keep us at bay for the last few minutes, but we managed to strike quickly straight down the middle while they were still floundering.

Random star performer

Lukas Rupp, who bossed the midfield all night as we dominated possession and, crucially, made the tackle to start the move for the goal. Special mention too for Todd Cantwell, who would have already sewn up the Shithousery of the Season award if he’d managed to steer the ball the other side of the post having leapt up from injury in the first half.

Farke Watch

The two strikers experiment seemed to go pretty well, with Pukki able to get more involved in the link-up play than previous games, and the substitutions paid off with Idah assisting Vrancic. Nice to see Todd back and more than earning  his place.

Summary

A tough and at times frustrating game, but the right outcome and the one we needed. Back-to-back wins have bounced us up to a much nicer area of the table and on Saturday Wycombe visit Carrow Road still seeking their first point of the season, which means one of two things will happen: either a confidence-boosting victory by loads of goals to put us firmly in the play-off places, or a textbook ACN.