By CovSid67
February 2 2011

6,000 long-suffering Coventry City supporters made the short journey to St. Andrews, and, after surviving a couple of early scares (Including an almost unmissable miss from Zigic within 90 seconds, and a quality Westwood stop from Phillips), saw their side take a 2-0 lead with just over a quarter of the match played.

Connor Thomas was given his first start in midfield for Coventry, with Lee Carsley still injured, the releasing of Michael Doyle, and a late injury to Sammy Clingan, and must have been enjoying his debut until things went pear-shaped. 

It was, unfortunately, his inability to close Bentley down (Shortly after either being, or not being booked, depending on which commentator you believe!) that saw the Spurs reject unleash a quality strike to bring the score back to 2-1. Quality, but totally unavoidable. 

For Birmingham, goalkeeper Colin Doyle - part of the Coventry City side embarrassed by Morecambe in the League Cup in August - came in for his second game of the season, this time again Coventry City. And this time, despite doing a lot of flapping about and not looking particularly convincing, and not a lot of saving, he finished on the winning side (Mainly down to Coventry City not bothering to test him at all in the second half). 

King had opened the scoring for Coventry City after a fine run and shot from the edge of the penalty area, while Richard Wood finally stopped doing his 'fifty pence head' impression in the opposition penalty area to send a fine header from a corner past Doyle in the Birmingham goal. 

Sadly, despite the fact this was against what was virtually Birmingham's reserve side, it still wasn't enough to see Coventry progress to the fifth round of the competition (And a home tie against Sheffield Wednesday). Disappointment on a massive scale, again. 

As well as not bothering with the odd shot or two in the second half, Coventry stopped challenging for the ball, and gifted Parnaby an equaliser, and Phillips a winner. Yet another abject 45 minutes, though to some Coventry City supporters, this was acceptable.... 

Far too many Coventry players had an 'off day', including supposed Birmingham target Carl Baker, who, apart from one Taarabt style 'leaving defenders trailing in his wake' run, did very little. Gary McSheffrey did very little to 'show Birmingham what they're missing' too. 

And Clive Platt, despite Aidy Boothroyd's opinion that he was 'causing absolute havoc', did very little throughout (Boothroyd also claimed: 'Both their centre-halves were looking to the bench to come off at one point because I don't think they fancied it until [Platt] ran out of steam in the end').  

Bizarrely, Freddie Eastwood was given some blame by supporters for the defeat, despite getting such a short run-out he barely had time to touch the ball. 

TEAM: Westwood, Keogh, O'Halloran, Cranie, Wood, Baker, Thomas (Cameron 80), Gunnarsson, McSheffrey, King, Platt (Eastwood 80). SNU: Ireland, Ruffles, Clarke, Bell, Jutkiewicz.