Stoke City 3 Birmingham City 2:A STUNNING goal by Ricardo Fuller with barely 20 minutes to go doubled the lead Robert Huth had given Stoke and looked set to end their run of four consecutive defeats with a convincing victory.
Back came Birmingham, with Republic of Ireland international Keith Fahey and Cameron Jerome scoring in the space of two minutes, but Dean Whitehead’s scuffed close-range effort sealed the points for Stoke.
Fuller’s sumptuous curling shot from 20 yards followed a solo slalom down the right in which he left Barry Ferguson trailing and cut in past Liam Ridgewell before letting fly. “We only score from the throw-ins” gloated Stoke’s followers. The words stuck in their throats as Blues belatedly came to life before Whitehead’s ungainly – but invaluable – intervention.
The lower Stoke slipped down the table, the more their supporters took the moral high ground over the sequence of refereeing decisions that had cost them dear in the previous four matches. Every award to Stoke was greeted with ironic cheers by a home crowd bristling with the us-against-the-world spirit. Each decision against them was viewed through the prism of recent events, prompting the manager Tony Pulis to dash around his technical area in high dudgeon. Pulis and his Birmingham counterpart, Alex McLeish, had both dispensed with a ball artist, Tuncay Sanli and Alexander Hleb respectively, suggesting they expected a physical contest.
The ball spent a lot of the time in the air, befitting a contest where the attacks were spearheaded by Kenwyne Jones and Nikola Zigic, though the anticipated long-ball barrage did not materialise.
Guardian Service
STOKE CITY: Begovic, Huth, Faye, Higginbotham, Collins, Pennant (Whelan 73), Whitehead, Delap, Etherington (Wilson 90), Jones, Fuller (Walters 90). Subs not used: Sorensen, Gudjohnsen, Sanli, Wilkinson. Goals: Huth 44, Fuller 71, Whitehead 85.
BIRMINGHAM CITY: Foster, Carr, Dann, Johnson, Ridgewell, Larsson, Ferguson, Gardner, Beausejour (Fahey 61), Jerome, Zigic. Subs not used: Doyle, Bowyer, Phillips, Derbyshire, Parnaby, Hleb. Goals: Fahey 74, Jerome 76. Attendance: 26,381
Referee: Mark Clattenburg(Tyne Wear).
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