The molten rage that flowed out of Steve Bruce’s mouth better have forced the realization in his Birmingham boys that they were absolute bumbling idiots, or else… Like a rabble of effete flower arrangers, Birmingham skipped into battle against Everton at Goodison sorely underprepared for a fight, but what really enraged Bruce was his team’s lack of fairplay which turned the Goodison mausoleum into a cauldron of hatred for his Brum players.
Bruce said:
“There are a lot of young players in the side who must stop being naive and learn, then we will be okay. I told Forssell he should have kicked the ball out when he had the chance. What happened then is that the home crowd got their backs up, they were annoyed with what happened and it sparked their team into action. Little things like that change matches. If we had kicked the ball out when we had the chance, they would have had to give it back to us and it would have calmed things down and taken up some time. But by doing what we did, and with Kapo then kicking the ball out for a throw-in deep in Everton’s half, everybody was going berserk. Everton were being roared on and they came back at us to get those two goals in injury-time. All that could have been avoided, and I have told people that in no uncertain terms, the air was blue.”
So is the 12th man the reason Everton won, or is this a neatly wrapped and ribboned excuse used to mask the fact that Birmingham played a stinker?