Why Krystian Bielik Was Overlooked As Birmingham City Take ‘Really Good News’ From Bolton

Birmingham City suffered their first league defeat in over three months at the hands of Bolton Wanderers after a performance Chris Davies dubbed ‘uncharacteristic’.

That word felt appropriate after Blues lost for the first time in League One after taking the lead. Emil Hansson put Blues ahead and their first half performance was positive before Bailey Peacock-Farrell was beaten by John McAtee’s near-post shot.

George Thomason and Aaron Collins scored in the second half to inflict a third league defeat of the season on Blues and their first in 19 matches. Here are our talking points from the Toughsheet Community Stadium…

One game too many

A trip to Bolton would have been difficult without mounting injury problems.

Blues played well in the first half before McAtee scored against the run of play in a goal Peacock-Farrell won’t want to watch back.

There have been few times this season where Blues have been properly rattled by a League One opponent, this was one of those occasions and once Bolton levelled they seized control of the match.

Bolton have also had a hectic schedule to cope with, but no team in the EFL has played as many games as Blues have this season. Their 46th game of the season – a full League One campaign in itself – proved to be a bridge too far.

A change of dynamic

Ryan Allsop’s injury was always going to hurt Blues. Not only has Allsop been commanding and confident with his hands, the 32-year-old has been exceptional with his feet.

Throw in the absences of Ethan Laird and Keshi Anderson – the two wide players Allsop has picked out so superbly in recent months – and you lose an attacking weapon

Peacock-Farrell was calm and competent enough in his short passes but he rarely found his target when he went long. The stand-in stopper is clearly low on confidence and it didn’t help those around him.

Taylor Gardner-Hickman and Hansson filled in for Laird and Anderson and, to their credit, combined for the opening goal, but they didn’t provide the same dynamism going forward.

Jordi Osei-Tutu was impressive for Bolton at left wing-back and had the beating of Gardner-Hickman – you can’t help but feel his grip on the game would have been tested with Laird making him work going the other way.

Blues are a much weaker proposition without their number one goalkeeper and their two flying wide men.

Krystian Bielik overlooked

In order to play Gardner-Hickman at right-back and get Hansson back into the XI, Davies had to make the ruthless decision to overlook his captain Krystian Bielik again.

Given the way Davies talked Bielik up last week, he seemed the likeliest candidate to deputise at right-back for Laird having played the role well enough in December, but the Blues manager opted to move Gardner-Hickman instead.

Explaining the call, Davies said: “It was a case of getting Emil in the team and I had the chance to move Taylor back to a position that he did for quite a while when Ethan was out. That was the logic behind that and it looked like it worked well because one crossed for the other for the first goal.

“But in the end he nearly got sent off. We had to be careful because he was on a booking so I had to take him off and give Sampsted a chance.”

It’s fair to say Sampsted didn’t take his chance in a rare league outing. Moving Gardner-Hickman to right-back was the least disruptive option, Davies might do something different against Lincoln to freshen things up.

The sight of Jay Stansfield back on a football pitch two weeks after he was stretchered off at St Andrew’s was something to cling onto for disappointed Blues fans in Bolton.

Stansfield played 20-odd minutes as a substitute and will surely be restored to the starting line-up on Saturday.

Davies was downbeat in his post-match interview, as you would expect, but he was obviously happy to welcome back his top scorer.

He commented: “He came into the game at a difficult time, him and Jukey, but it’s good that he’s back after two weeks ago today he got what potentially could have been a season-ending injury. He’s recovered really well from it and that’s really good news.”