Ben Bloom was at St Andrew’s, and here’s his report. Thanks for reading this MBM.
Ipswich boss Kieran McKenna speaks to Sky. “It was a really tough game … it was always going to be that, coming here on the opening night … we didn’t impose ourselves well enough … the boys kept going … good impact from the bench … late goals will be important … Birmingham’s pressure was good, their intensity was good … it gives us a base to start with … I’m certain we will improve … there were some good things as well … sticking at it and getting the late goal is a big confidence booster … we have got some work to do … it was a passionate night … two passionate teams … it’s normal you will get flashpoints … I think there might have been an incident with the crowd and one of the players … that maybe wasn’t ideal … emotions run high … there is a lot of work to do in every aspect.”
Birmingham boss Chris Davies talks to Sky. “It was a very good game … really pleased with how we played … disappointed with the penalty … to concede so late is always a sore one … for the large part of the game we were the better team … played well … a lot of positives … a lot to take from that … the players are down … the penalty is really harsh … you won’t see many of those given … the context is more painful … it’s just scraped his finger … that’s ridiculous, that decision … over the course of the season hopefully we get those back our way … we didn’t let them settle … the boys were really focused … Ipswich are a very good footballing side … they normally keep the ball … they couldn’t do that tonight … there are mixed emotions right now … frustrated … but I can see how many positives we can take from that … that’s a team that was in the Premier League last year … we won’t play many teams as good as that … we have to keep building … we’re together as a club … for a long time it was pretty broken.”
The top of the Championship as it stands. Nothing more than a purist-goading exercise at this point in time.
| Pos | Team | P | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ipswich | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2 | Birmingham | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 3 | Blackburn | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 4 | Bristol City | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 5 | Charlton | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Jacob Greaves, whose header onto Lyndon Dykes’ arm won the equalising penalty, and who was also involved in Kyogo’s disallowed goal, adds: “I was just concentrating on the ball … I thought he’d give a foul on the keeper … but he’s pointed to the spot … I knew George was going to score, I see it in training every day … he got us the point … Kyogo was clever to be fair … I got a whack from behind … it is a foul … I felt contact … the ref got it right to be honest.”
Maybe I went a bit early with the Everyone Friends Again observation, because here’s George Hirst talking to Sky. “That’s what I get paid to do at the end of the day … that’s my bread and butter … the centre-half said it was a rubbish penalty … in slightly different terms (!) … but it’s in the back of the net … that’s all that matters at the end of the day … we stuck together.”
FULL TIME: Birmingham City 1-1 Ipswich Town
Birmingham deserved to win. Ipswich snatched a point they didn’t really deserve. But that’s Championship football. Everyone friends again at the final whistle, which is nice to see.
90 min +10: As for the penalty award, Dykes’ arm was certainly up in an unnatural position, but he didn’t know what was going on, facing the other way as Greaves headed the ball onto it. Unfortunate for the hosts, but there you are.
90 min +9: Chaplin was booked for celebrating the equaliser by slamming the ball into the stand behind the goal. Klarer took great offence and threatened to knock his block off, leading to the aforementioned brouhaha.
90 min +7: From the kick-off, Hirst skittles Paik. Then Laird slams into Broadhead. This was always threatening to boil over, and now it has.
90 min +5: The equaliser, and perhaps Ipswich’s celebrations, prove too much for Birmingham. Both teams engage in a big shoving match. Young has quite a lot to say for himself, while Chaplin earns a booking.
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GOAL! Birmingham City 1-1 Ipswich Town (Hirst 90+5 pen)
Hirst waits for Allsop to commit himself, then slots down the middle. It’s Ipswich’s first shot on target all night!
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Penalty to Ipswich Town!
90 min +3: Davis drops deep on the right and crosses long. Osayi-Samuel is forced to head behind for a corner. Young sends it long … and then the referee points to the spot! Greaves heads onto the outstretched arm of Dykes, and it’s a penalty for the Tractor Boys!
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90 min +1: Dykes gallops after a long pass down the inside-left channel, but is never getting there ahead of Palmer, who claims on the edge of his box.
90 min: There have been quite a few subs, and quite a few stoppages, so there will be a minimum of eight minutes of added time.
89 min: Anderson goes down with cramp and is eventually replaced by Gardner-Hickman.
87 min: Ipswich string a few passes together for the first time in a long while. Al-Hamadi finds himself in space, just inside the Birmingham box on the right, but slips and loses the chance to shoot. As good an opportunity as Ipswich have had all night, gone in an instant.
86 min: Young crosses from a deep position on the right. Hirst wins a header at the far stick, but can only eyebrow it over the bar. Allsop has had very little to do this evening.
85 min: Another Ipswich change, as Humphreys replaces the debutant Matusiwa.
83 min: Birmingham make a double change. Dykes replaces the goalscorer Stansfield, while in a more defensively-minded switch, Laird comes on for Gray.
81 min: Gray snaffles Young’s loose pass and nearly breaks into the Ipswich box down the left. Birmingham keep the visitors pinned back but Iwata releases the pressure by hoicking a dreadful long-range effort high and wide.
79 min: Another Ipswich change, as Al-Hamadi comes on for Clarke.
78 min: Kyogo, with an assist and a harshly disallowed goal to his name on debut, makes way for Doyle. Appreciative applause soundtracks his departure.
76 min: Stansfield spins Taylor, who clumsily clanks into him. Taylor, on a yellow, is very apologetic. Stansfield isn’t that willing to accept the hand of friendship. The referee gives Taylor the benefit of the doubt. Just a free kick. To be fair, it was more clumsy than aggressive, but there’s another Ipswich midfielder treading a fine line.
74 min: Cochrane wastes the resulting free kick, aiming for the top-left corner. An ambitious shot, with the box full of team-mates demanding a cross.
73 min: Stansfield nicks the ball off Matusiwa, who fouls him from behind. Having already been booked, the new Ipswich midfielder wants to watch himself here. Then Greaves drags Kyogo to the ground as the striker probes down the right. These two teams are falling out.
71 min: Paik is booked for a late lunge on Matusiwa. Quite a few knowing challenges going in at the moment.
70 min: To a chorus of ear-splitting boos, Young crosses from the right, looking for Hirst, who tangles with Neumann. A bit of shoving. Everyone still on edge.
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69 min: The first change of the evening, and it’s made by Ipswich. A triple change, in fact. Chaplin, Broadhead and Young come on for Szmodics, Ogbene and Johnson. The 40-year-old Young, formerly of Aston Villa, receives the pantomime abuse you’d expect.
67 min: … but Ipswich soon get back to their metronomic passing. Birmingham hold them at arm’s length though.
65 min: Ipswich had enjoyed 90 percent of possession since the goal, a fine response to falling behind. So the hosts pass it around the back for a bit to reassert themselves. Anderson then buys a cheap free kick by turning the clumsy Johnson, and now it’s Birmingham’s turn to take their sweet time over a restart.
63 min: The resulting free kick leads to a corner on the right. Davis swings it in, and O’Shea heads it high over the bar. This match continues to bubble away without quite boiling over. There’s still time.
61 min: Cochrane flips Szmodics into the air, and Matusiwa takes exception to the act. An exchange of viewpoints. The referee tells everyone to simmer down.
59 min: Ipswich have done a lot of sitting back, but now they need to come out and play. So that’s what they do. Davis nearly gets on the end of Szmodics’ right-wing cross. Then Szmodics and Hirst one-two their way down the inside-right channel, only for Klarer to slide into view and hook away elegantly. A crucial intervention, because Szmodics would have been clear in the box.
57 min: The likes of Tom Brady and David Beckham are all good and well, but here’s a proper old-school celebrity Blue celebrating in the stand: Jasper Carrott. Second-city royalty.
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GOAL! Birmingham City 1-0 Ipswich Town (Stansfield 55)
Palmer’s clearance is met on the halfway line by Osayi-Samuel, who heads it back down the inside-right channel. Kyogo gets in ahead of O’Shea, extending a leg and lobbing over Palmer. The ball cannons off the left-hand post and back to the feet of Stansfield, who can’t miss, and roofs it from six yards. St Andrew’s erupts!
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53 min: Osayi-Samuel passes back to Allsop under intense pressure from Clarke. There’s plenty of juice on the pass, so the keeper does well to chip it back to his full-back over the head of the buzzing Clarke. Birmingham hearts in mouths for a split second there.
51 min: Hirst gets involved with Klarer on the halfway line, as the pair tussle under a long ball. A feeling that it wouldn’t take too much for this game to erupt in the precision-throwing of hands.
49 min: Iwata tries to return the favour with a curler from the right, but with Kyogo lurking, Greaves clears behind for a corner. The resulting set piece falls to Paik on the left-hand edge of the D; Paik swings a leg and hoicks harmlessly wide left. A long way left.
47 min: Kyogo tees up Iwata on the edge of the Ipswich box with a cushioned pass. Iwata blazes over.
46 min: The ball skims off the top of Osayi-Samuel’s head and nearly out for a corner. Osayi-Samuel chases back to stop the ball on the line, but is then flattened by Hirst, who had also been chasing and couldn’t slow his run. Free kick. Hirst not afraid to put it about.
Ipswich get the second half started. No changes. “Maybe there was to much hype to this fixture because neither side looks very impressive,” argues Mary Waltz. “Plus the officials wearing out their whistle has not helped.”
Half-time entertainment. Who and what to look out for this season in the Championship, courtesy of Ben Fisher.
HALF TIME: Birmingham City 0-0 Ipswich Town
Ipswich are favourites to go up, Birmingham third favourites. Both teams have 45-and-a-half more games to justify those predictions.
45 min +2: Johnson curls in from the right. Taylor comes in from the other flank and shoulders the ball wide. A decent enough chance to end the half.
45 min +1: The first of two additional first-half minutes passes without incident.
45 min: Gray takes the resulting free kick. A gentle curler towards the right-hand side of the goal that nestles gently in Palmer’s midriff. Easy.
44 min: Anderson barrels down the middle of the park and is unceremoniously skittled from behind by Matusiwa. A tug of the shirt, then a cheeky knee in the coccyx. No complaints, as he took one for the team. Anderson had options either side.
43 min: The expected goals so far: 0.18 to 0.15. Probably not too much by way of surprise in that statistic.
41 min: Anderson curls in from the left. Osayi-Samuel races in, hoping to slam home, but Greaves gets in ahead of him, hooking clear. In any case, the flag goes up – correctly – for offside.
40 min: Anderson scuffs a shot from 25 yards. It’s deflected as well. No good. Easy for Palmer. But then Matusiwa fluffs a pass upfield, and now Stansfield is gifted a chance to shoot from distance. He drags it wide left.
38 min: Szmodics is fine to continue.
37 min: Szmodics sits down so he can get some attention from the physio. As the doc trots on, everyone else migrates to the touchline to get a drink.
35 min: The officials have had a bit of a shocker so far this evening, to be fair.
33 min: A free kick for Ipswich in the centre circle, awarded for a fair challenge by Iwata on Hirst. It’s launched towards Davis on the left. Birmingham stand stock-still, playing the offside trap well. But the flag doesn’t go up, and Davis whistles a shot-cum-cross through the six-yard box. Just as well that didn’t go in, because Birmingham would have had two reasons to complain. No VAR, you see.
32 min: Iwata threads a pass down the inside-left channel for Stansfield, who takes a touch to make space in the Ipswich box before leaning back and larruping over the bar. Palmer should have been put to work there.
31 min: The game settles down a bit, with Birmingham now slowing things down a tad, in order to nix Ipswich’s growing influence.
29 min: Neumann pings a long pass down the right channel for Kyogo, who brings the ball down with a deft touch. But O’Shea comes across to block and clear before the striker can get a shot away. Kyogo looks in fine fettle, his old Celtic self, despite that weird interregnum at Rennes.
27 min: Szmodics, out on the left, has the opportunity to find Hirst in space on the edge of the Birmingham box, but misplaces the pass. After the slowest of starts, Ipswich are beginning to impose themselves on this game.
25 min: Allsop shanks a pass straight to Szmodics, in a pocket of space on the edge of the D. You’d expect Szmodics to work the bumbling goalkeeper at the very least, but he slices a wild shot wide left of the target. A huge let-off for the Birmingham keeper.
24 min: Szmodics wins a ball he had no right to win, out on the left. He loops immediately into the Birmingham box … but none of his team-mates have kept up with play, and the hosts calmly let the ball bounce away from danger.
22 min: Stansfield threads a pass down the inside-left channel for Kyogo, who swivels and aims a first-time shot towards the bottom-left corner. Side netting. Palmer then takes his sweet time over the restart. The home fans are on a rolling boil.
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20 min: O’Shea bangs long down the middle. For a second, it looks as though Szmodics will take the ball under control and tear clear. But just as he’s about to enter the box and shoot … hello, Neumann! He appears out of nowhere to flick the ball off Szmodics’ toe. Great last-ditch defending.
18 min: Taylor and Osayi-Samuel bundle each other into touch and square up momentarily. It’s over very little, it has to be said. Both are booked.
16 min: The referee Andrew Kitchen is whistling for anything and everything right now. Neither manager appears particularly happy with his no-contact approach; the crowd are certainly fuming. It’s needlessly stop-start. Plus we’ve already seen a perfectly good goal disallowed as a result of this fussy nonsense.
14 min: Iwata shapes to advance down the middle and is shoved crudely in the back by Hirst. Just a free kick, but the foul stopped a Birmingham attack, and could easily have led to the first booking of the season.
12 min: Birmingham have enjoyed 84 percent of possession so far. Ipswich have been strangely passive.
10 min: Cochrane whips a cross in from the left. Osayi-Samuel romps in from the other flank but can’t connect. This is a fast, impressive start by Birmingham.
9 min: An almost identical incident, but this time it’s Greaves nudging Kyogo to shepherd the ball back to his keeper … and this time no foul is awarded! The home fans are furious, and you can understand why.
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7 min: Kyogo gently nudges Greaves out of the way, under a long ball, and lobs Palmer elegantly from 25 yards. It should stand as a gloriously cheeky goal, but the referee blows for a foul on Greaves. That’s soft, and very generous to Ipswich.
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5 min: It’s all Birmingham in terms of possession, the home side buzzing around, pressing hard. Ipswich have hardly touched the ball. When they do finally get it, they deliberately slow things down, Johnson taking an age over a throw. Blues boss Chris Davies isn’t happy at these antics, and tells the fourth official how he sees it.
3 min: A bit of time and space for Anderson out on the left. He’s got four team-mates to find in the Ipswich box, but seriously overhits his cross, which sails harmlessly into the stand behind the goal.
2 min: A rare old atmosphere at St Andrew’s this evening. Expectation ahoy. A quiet start on the pitch, however.
Blues get the ball rolling. The new Championship season is underway!
The teams take to the field of dreams … and it’s the start of a new season, so let us introduce you to their brand-new threads. Blues will be wearing … well, you’d think so, wouldn’t you? But their 2025-26 jersey is bluer than just plain old blue: it’s [squints, adjusts spectacles] “HYPER COBALT”. Ipswich sport their red away kit today, but the shoulders and arms have [moves pince-nez down bridge of nose] “a unique pattern created from the current crest to mark 30 years since the club moved to this version” and also an advertising patch which shills their most famous fan’s hot-sauce business. (And so, already, I’ve now made reference to both Brady and Sheeran. I’m sorry. I have failed you.) We’ll be off in a minute.
Birmingham boss Chris Davies talks to Sky. “It’s the first game … we have a long season ahead of us … I was pleased we got a home game … it’s a bit of a celebration at getting promoted and our first game back at this level … we can share that with our fans … we are expecting a really tough match … the favourites … a really strong team … it suits the occasion … we must prove we can compete … the next game is the most important one and this is it … the next league is usually quicker so we tried to address that … speed and athleticism … could we get more of that in the team? … I think we have managed to do that … more goal threats … we won a lot of games by just a goal … set pieces as well … quality of delivery … still a way to go before I have a squad that is complete and we are happy with … we can’t wait for this game to get going.”
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Birmingham co-owner Tom Wagner is at St Andrew’s tonight, and he chats to Sky Sports. “Chris Davies has been unbelievable … for his first coaching gig to set a points record … to dominate the way he did is a testament to the way he prepares the team and squad … keeps them motivated … very, very pleased with the work he has done … with Tom Brady there is no such thing as ‘good enough’, you are either striving for excellence every single day or you may as well find somewhere else to be … that holds true for every member of the organisation … that’s what it takes for us to get to where we want to be … my expectations are that everybody performs at their very best … every member of staff … the folks we don’t see every day … the highest level … it sounds trite to say it, but that’s the reality … I certainly will have nothing to offer on who we should recruit, how we should play and what they should do for the 90 minutes, but I can certainly help with the culture and the attitude … thinking about the game and the experience as a supporter might … what would I want if I were on the other side of the wall? … if you keep that mindset and remember the club is theirs and not ours, you get 99 percent of the way there … we care about this city and the people who live and work here … I trust people will take me at my word when I say that.”
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Ipswich boss Kieran McKenna speaks to Sky, and is asked for his thoughts on his side being favourites for promotion. “It’s a positive … it reflects we’ve done some good things over the last few years … in the end it doesn’t mean very much, you have to earn the right every game, every week … there is a lot of work ahead of us … we are ready for the challenge … it’s not alien to us … in League One we were one of the promotion favourites … our depth isn’t what it needs to be in some positions … we’re pretty tight … we expect to be stronger in a few weeks’ time … [Ajax striker Chuba Akpom] has been well publicised … it’s one we’re trying to get done … we’re hoping for good news on that one.”
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Birmingham name three debutants in their starting XI. Kyōgo, formerly of Celtic, starts up front, while Bright Osayi-Samuel and Phil Neumann line up at the back. Demarai Gray makes his second debut for his boyhood club, having since played for Leicester, Bayer Leverkusen, Everton and Al-Ittifaq.
Ipswich have one new name in their starting line-up: midfielder Azor Matusiwa. Ashley Young, 40 last month, is on the bench waiting for his first start since his move from Everton.
The teams
Birmingham City: Allsop, Samuel, Klarer, Neumann, Cochrane, Paik, Iwata, Anderson, Stansfield, Gray, Furuhashi.
Subs: Beadle, Laird, Bielik, Cashin, Leonard, Doyle, Gardner-Hickman, Willumsson, Dykes.
Ipswich Town: Palmer, Johnson, O’Shea, Greaves, Davis, Ogbene, Taylor, Matusiwa, Jack Clarke, Szmodics, Hirst.
Subs: Walton, Kipre, Woolfenden, Chaplin, Young, Al Hamadi, Humphreys, Broadhead, Barbrook.
Referee: Andrew Kitchen (Durham).
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Preamble
Birmingham City and Ipswich Town return to the Championship tonight, albeit from different directions, and possibly therefore in different moods. Birmingham slummed it in League One last season, racking up 111 points on their way to the second third-tier title in their history; meanwhile Ipswich, having reached the Premier League arguably ahead of schedule, won just four games all season and were cashiered back from whence they came.
Ipswich’s sorry fate won’t have any bearing on the ambitions of these two clubs. Town want to bounce back to the top flight immediately, and are the short-priced favourites to win this division; Birmingham fancy following in Ipswich’s footsteps, given the Tractor Boys were the last team to leap from League One to the Premier League with successive promotions, and they’re third-favourites in the race for glory. Everyone can work out how to stay in the Premier League when they get there.
An exciting way to begin the Championship season, then. The match kicks off at 8pm UK time, and if we can get through the entire evening without reference to either Tom Brady or Ed Sheeran that’ll also be great.
