Sport

Birmingham go down

Tottenham 2 Birmingham 1: BIRMINGHAM CITY showed pride and conviction, but that gave only a touch of honour to relegation

KEVIN McCARRA at White Hart Lane
Mon May 23 2011 - 01:00

Tottenham 2 Birmingham 1:BIRMINGHAM CITY showed pride and conviction, but that gave only a touch of honour to relegation. They rallied from 1-0 down to level with a splendid drive from Craig Gardner in the 79th minute. It was all to no avail.

Even a draw would have led to Alex McLeish’s side being relegated, but they were defeated in stoppage time in any case when the substitute Roman Pavlyuchenko scored his second goal of the day. Tottenham have sealed their Europa League place by taking fifth place.

The deeper emotion was still Birmingham’s despair. This season’s League Cup final was not long over when the victorious Birmingham manager Alex McLeish began to sound phlegmatic rather than euphoric. He was ready even then to think about the stiff challenge of preserving his squad in the top flight. Beating Arsenal at Wembley had been a diversion.

He had always known that there could be an afternoon such as this to come. Following that final, Birmingham had won just two of their 11 Premier League games before coming to White Hart Lane.

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McLeish said: “I’m obviously pretty gutted. When we got a goal I thought we’d done it but then there was the Wolves’ comeback and their (Tottenham’s) late goal.”

As for the future, McLeish said: “I’ve been knocked down today and I’m going to rise to it. It’s going to be a pretty horrible couple of days – or summer I suppose – but I’ve got to work to get Birmingham back to the Premier League. I’ll chat with the chairman (Carsen Yeung) in midweek and see where we go from there. We know to get back (into the Premier League) we have to maintain the quality factor. The players have got to fight on and rise to the next challenge. They’ve got to pick themselves up again.”

They did at least show resilience before half-time, although that also underlined the fact that Tottenham are an attractive side who nonetheless lack firepower. Peter Crouch could not quite connect with a low cross from Danny Rose in the 22th minute. He eventually had to go off because of a blow to his cheekbone, so giving Pavlyuchenko his opportunity.

Earlier, a 20-yarder from the Tottenham midfielder Sandro had been tipped over by Ben Foster. By and large, there had been no great hunger so long as each club was on course to achieve its aim. That altered, however, when a ball from Danny Rose on the left came to Pavlyuchenko and he curled a finish into the far corner of the net after 49 minutes. Ultimately, Birmingham lacked the means to rescue themselves.