Shrewsbury Town 4-2 Birmingham City

By The Bluenose Bible

Two late goals from Shrewsbury’s Paul Parry and Darren Jones ended Blues’ undefeated record during preseason in a six goal thriller at Greenhous Meadow.

Lee Clark’s side couldn’t have wished for a worst start as Tom Bradshaw flicked on a good ball to Jon Taylor for him to take into the box and coolly slot home to give the Shropshire side an early advantage inside ten minutes of the kick off.

Bradshaw doubled the home side’s lead within three minutes by finishing off a superb move down the right hand side from close range past a very frustrated Colin Doyle.

Doyle had every right to be unhappy with his defenders due to the gung ho approach of the two trialist full backs, Liam Davies and Mark Little, who left Paul Robinson and Dan Burn exposed on several occasions to a pacy attacking Shrewsbury four.

Despite being behind and looking awful defensively, the away side managed to create a couple of late first half chances with Matt Green firing just over from 20 yards and Wade Elliott failing to hit the target from close range.

Minutes after the restart Green made it second time lucky with his long range chances by halving the deficit with a deflected effort from 25 yards, just out of reach for Salop goalkeeper Joe Anyon. 

This goal gave the Blues a real chance to get back in the game and it wasn’t long before the comeback was complete. Green attempted another long range shot that fell into Chris Burke’s path. The Scottish winger cut inside and placed a curling effort into the top corner in similar fashion to some of his goals over the last two seasons.

Once the second goal for Birmingham had completed the comeback the side seemed to take their foot off gas the gas and Shrewsbury were to make them pay for it.

A ball over the away side’s defence was met by Paul Parry and the former Welsh international lobbed outrushing Doyle, who could only watch the ball nestle into the net from over 30 yards out.

The defensive horror show concluded with a fourth from Graham Turner’s side late on. Darren Jones found space on the edge of the Birmingham box before the defender dummied Dan Burn and finished well for the sixth goal on the night.

Lee Clark:

“There was lots of positive things with the ball but without the ball we were bang average at best. So that’s massive that we get that sorted within the next 10 days, for sure, because that won’t be acceptable, that won’t get us a result against Watford.

“I’ve spoken many times about doing the right things when you haven’t got it [the ball]. We just looked like a team that wanted to do things when we had it.

“We did get ourselves back in the game but then you gave another two, bang average, goals away. A straight ball over the top and then a poor decision for the third goal, and then for someone to get that amount of space to turn on the edge of the box is crazy.

“A very, very worthwhile exercise, lots for us to consider.”