Birmingham City manager Alex McLeish rues his side’s ‘soft’ defending in defeat to Newcastle

BPL, Newcastle United v Birmingham City,Liam Ridgwell

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Alex McLeish has admitted his disappointed with his 10-mens’ “soft” defending as Birmingham lost 2-1 to Newcastle at St James’ Park.

Shola Ameobi scored from the spot after Liam Ridgwell had handled in the area, which the defender received a red card for.

Steven Taylor doubled the home side’s lead, something McCleish thinks was an injustice, as he believed the Newcastle man should have been sent off.

“I’m disappointed; we were soft at the corners. The Shola Ameobi header was a difficult one, but Ben Foster did wonders to keep it out and then we end up with a penalty against us. Steven Taylor had a free one for the second one,” McLeish told reporters.

“It was a double whammy as Taylor probably should have been off the park leading his elbow in Cameron Jerome’s cheekbone early in the game. We don’t want to see that in the game, but unfortunately the referee didn’t see it.”

The Birmingham boss had no arguments about the penalty decision but believes Ridgewell was wrongly sent off for denying a goal-scoring opportunity. The Scot also felt the dismissal was one of a number of rulings that went against his side.

He said: “It hit his arm, it was on the line, it wasn’t going towards the goal. It was going to the side, but Kevin Nolan was probably in a good position to get on the end of it. The referee has seen the arm going towards the ball and that’s a penalty, that’s the rules.

“If it prevents a goal-scoring opportunity then I believe it’s a sending off but I think he only gets one game ban for that, it’s not violent conduct. It was going across the face of goal it wasn’t actually going in when he handled it but it’s a penalty. It wasn’t 100 per cent that Nolan was going to score.

“It was difficult for the referee to make that split second decision. But a lot of the big decisions seemed to go against us today and that was one of them.”

McLeish revealed his team are now in a fight to stay in the Premier League as suspensions and injuries have left his side bereft of quality and confidence. However, he vowed that the Bluenoses would keep going to end to secure their safety whilst praising the ability of keeper Ben Foster who made some outstanding saves to keep Birmingham in the game.

He added: “We are a team that have had to battle from the very first game, I’m sure we’ll be battling to the very last. We have a horrendous catalogue of injuries, I know that a lot of teams are the same, so I’m not going to use it as an excuse.

“We’ve lost a few strikers, one who was on top form when he went out injured but the players have got us to this stage since. We’ve got seven points out of nine at home so they deserve an awful lot of credit. We just need to make that final push.

“He Foster is a great goalkeeper. He’s saved us an awful lot of points this season. I can’t emphasise enough how important that position is.”