City slip to heavy defeat at Birmingham as failure to buy a striker is exposed - again

Norwich City’s unbeaten start to the Championship campaign was ended in dramatic fashion on Saturday afternoon as they succumbed to a 3-0 defeat at Birmingham City. David Davis’ first-half strike opened the scoring for Birmingham before a Clayton Donaldson brace consigned Alex Neil to his first Championship defeat away from home since becoming Norwich boss in what, rather fittingly, was a display of total ineptitude from his side.

The defeat was a tale of poor managerial decisions, individual mistakes and, perhaps most significantly, the club’s failure to recruit. Entering a season with only one striker that the manager has any intention of using is recipe for disaster. When said striker, Cameron Jerome, gets injured then you are left in a rather precarious position - a precarious position that Norwich were exposed to at St Andrews. There is simply no excuse. It is an absolute failure of the board and recruitment team and there is no getting away from that fact. The club had over two months to prepare a competent squad and yet, here we are, 5 games in and 4 days before the window closes shut, and we are still in desperate need of strengthening. It is the same story almost every summer and yet, somehow, we still aren’t learning our lesson - and today we got deservedly punished for it.

Injury to Jerome forced Neil to play Steven Naismith up front and immediately any prospect of us having an attacking focal point was gone. The Scot has been ineffective to say the least in his more comfortable role of attacking midfielder and so the chances of him being effective as a lone striker seemed slim, and so it proved. Perhaps Alex Neil’s worst trait is his stubbornness and this was demonstrated again in his refusal to start Kyle Lafferty. I am by no means Lafferty’s biggest fan and, if we can add a striker or two, I don’t see much of a future for him at City but there is no doubt that he is by far more suited to fulfill the role of Jerome in offering an attacking outlet and, most importantly, a physical presence. Naismith is neither tall or strong enough to be an effective lone striker and this was quickly demonstrated as City failed to grab any sort of strangle-hold on the game.

Perhaps more mystifying than the decision to play Naismith over Lafferty was the one to start Stephen Whittaker over Russell Martin. Martin has been struggling for fitness in recent weeks but Tuesday night saw him complete 90 minutes during the League Cup win over Coventry and so he should be ready. Martin is no world-beater but he is undoubtedly a more reliable option than Whittaker - the latters’ inability to go a whole 90 minutes without making a mistake was demonstrated once more during the defeat, as he clumsily felled Donaldson resulting in a penalty and Birmingham’s second.

8 points from our opening 4 games represented a start to the season that perhaps our performances haven’t warranted: we were more than disappointing in last Sunday’s East Anglian Derby, unspectacular (but ultimately effective) against Bristol City and lacklustre against Sheffield Wednesday. 8 points from 5 games suddenly does not look so impressive and, on the back of such a woeful display (described as the worst of Neil’s reign), it would be false to say that there aren’t some concerns going into the international break. Birmingham had won just one of their opening four games before our visit and yet they comprehensively brushed us aside. For a side of our quality, regardless of injuries and a lack of signings, that is not good enough.

It goes without saying that the next four days, before the window slams shut, and the week following the return from the international break - when we play Cardiff, Wigan and Forest - are going to be crucial. We must get it right.