Birmingham City 4-1 Sheffield Wednesday

Written by: Oliver Osborn (The Bluenose Bible)

It’s fair to say midfielder Jesse Lingard could not have had a start to his loan spell with Birmingham City. The 20 year old took just 35 minutes to score a hat trick and guide Lee Clark’s side to a 4-1 win against Sheffield Wednesday at St. Andrews, their first home victory of the season.

In the early stages of the match it was actually the away side who dominated  with Michail Antonio and Jeremy Helan attempting to take advantage of some poor defending, both hitting shots just wide of Darren Randolph’s goal.

But it was Blues who opened the scoring through the Manchester United loanee Lingard, which instigated a magic 15 minutes for the England U21 international.

Chris Burke cut inside from the right, past a couple of players and hit a great left footed effort which was well saved by Chris Kirkland before Lingard tapped in at the back post to open his account in senior football, but he didn’t know the best was yet to come.

Just before the half hour mark, the youngster on loan with Birmingham City for a month doubled the home sides advantage and his own personal tally for the match. If the first goal suggested he was in the right place at the right time, then his second showed his high regard at one of the greatest clubs in the world is well justified.       

Veteran midfielder Wade Elliott played a defence splitting pass through for the left winger to leave him one on one with Kirkland. Lingard showed blistering pace to beat offside trap and great composure to calmly slot home past the on rushing ‘keeper and put Blues in a fantastic position to record only their second win of the season.

It took only four more minutes for the debutant to complete his hat trick and amazing first half performance for the side. Captain Paul Robinson played in Lingard who used quick feet and awareness to find half a yard, finished a low effort into the bottom corner to guarantee his ownership of the match ball when the game concluded before referee Keith Hill had even blown the whistle for half time.

Despite The Owls coming out for the second half early to warm up, Dave Jones’ men were unable to prevent the unstoppable winger from scoring game. Burke weaved his way past a few tackles and passed to an unmarked Lingard to slot home and become the club’s top scorer for the season and double anyone else’s tally after just 51 minutes of his loan spell.

Following the fourth, it seemed as if the side got complacent and started to take their foot off the gas with most players going forward to see if they could grab a fifth. This meant Wednesday could create chances and it wasn’t a surprise when the Yorkshire side grabbed a consolation.   

Another debutant got involved in the action as loan signing Stephen McPhail crossed for Kamil Zayatte to grab a consolation for The Owls and score his second of the season.

With key league matches coming up against Bolton, Millwall and Charlton at home, this piece of inspirational business in the loan window could be exactly what could changes our fortunes for the rest of the season ahead.

Birmingham coach Terry McDermott:

“I was a little disappointed because I thought he (Lingard) could have got five!

“It was fantastic for the kid but mainly for the whole team after the poor performance at Burnley last Tuesday.

“It is probably the best we have played this season and probably last season.

“We just have to continue playing to this standard and we will win a lot more games.”

Sheffield Wednesday boss Dave Jones:

“This is probably the worst performance I’ve seen from a Sheffield Wednesday side.

“The goals we gave away were hard to swallow. I can only apologise to the fans for the performance we put in. The players should go to the fans themselves and apologise.

“We began brightly but we then switched off. You cannot allow him (Lingard) to get on the ball, turn and run at us. For some reason they allowed him too much scope.”

Starting line up: Randolph; Bartley, Burn, Robinson, Spector, Murphy; Burke Adeyemi,  Elliott, Lingard (Ferguson 71′); Green (Lovenkrands 83′)

Unused subs: Doyle, Novak, Shinnie, Brown, Caddis

Man of the match: Jesse Lingard