Put it down to inexperience for Birmingham City

Feb 14 2008 By Colin Tattum, Birmingham Mail

BLUES have kept three clean sheet all season, the Boxing Day shut-out coinciding with their last victory, over Middlesbrough.

Their back four have been, in general, relatively young, with Liam Ridgewell (23), Johan Djourou (20) and Stephen Kelly (24) all seeing plenty of action.

David Murphy (23) has now replaced Franck Queudrue at left-back, although Martin Taylor's know-how has beenadded.

It's said that defenders get better as they mature, and when Blues were at their most miserly in 2003, wily pros Jeff Kenna, Jamie Clapham, Kenny Cunningham and Olivier Tebily often held sway, with Matthew Upson providing youthful eagerness fired by a point to prove after leaving Arsenal.

Maik Taylor, at 36, is Blues' oldest player. Could the inexperience around him, and in midfield areas, be a factor in the inability to consistently halt the opposition scoring?

"Possibly, possibly," mused the goalkeeper, who said that things became more obvious when the type of opposition was taken into account.

"It has shown that when we have faced the better sides in the table we have managed to relax and play our best football.

"Maybe that little bit of inexperience when we have played the teams in and around us who are scrapping for their lives has shown, we've come unstuck a bit.

"There is obviously added pressure on these games as they are genuine six-pointers.

We have not handled it quite so well.

"But the lads are learning all of the time and getting better for it.

"We have three games left when we play teams down with us, aside from that our fixtures are against teams higher in the league.

"Maybe that will suit us during the run-in to come."

Those games are Reading, Wigan Athletic and Fulham, all away. A week on Saturday, Blues embark on back-to-back home matches against Arsenal and Spurs.