Johnson hails 'dogged City performance'

City Head Coach Lee Johnson said it was their “dogged determination” which helped secure the historic win; their first victory on Birmingham turf since 1993.

The vital goal came courtesy of Famara Diédhiou’s header, as he rose to meet Callum O’Dowda’s corner in the 63^rd minute.

“We silenced the crowd with our possession and stopped them from pressing us because of our quality build-up to a certain point,” Johnson told bcfc.co.uk. “But the second phase of that wasn’t anywhere near good enough. We didn’t execute enough passes, we had a couple of chances, a couple of corners but it wasn’t enough.

“It was brilliant to get our tails in front and it was a good ball from Callum. We had been working this week on getting across people in the box and it was a good example from Famara.

“After that the game changed and it became a real intense gladiator arena where there was no shirking of tackle; the wind was up, the rain was coming in and the boys and the fans deserved the win through the dogged determination to keep the ball out of the net.”

The win means City have now recorded seven points from their last three games as they eye extending their unbeaten run to four games against Norwich City next weekend.

Johnson said he was “very pleased” with the recent points tally adding “I would rather it have been nine of course but given the four losses on the spin shows the character of the team and it gets everyone on our side and us looking upwards as much as we can.

“We have an ambition to get to the play-offs but it’s tough in this division. We aim for the stars and we’ll get to January and see what we can do, see what we can manipulate and see if that can get us the sparkle that we need.”