Birmingham City's Liam Ridgewell says 'let's knuckle down'

Oct 6 2009 by Colin Tattum, Birmingham Mail

LIAM Ridgewell has told Birmingham City they must knuckle down and start to show their pride.

The defender, who made his first league appearance at Burnley since suffering a broken leg in April, said players had to step up their performance levels.

An encouraging start to the Premier League season has dissipated as Blues have lost five of their last six matches in all competitions and struggled for goals.

Tactics, formations and the spirit of adventure have all come under scrutiny and Alex McLeish has rounded robustly on his critics.

Ridgewell said: “Burnley are a relegation rival if you like and want to stay up this season just like we do so it was very disappointing to lose like we did.

“If we don’t expect more out of ourselves than we showed at Burnley then we’re going to struggle throughout the season.

“We wanted to come away with three points, obviously. But at least one point.

“We didn’t and it’s down to silly things that we’ve got to knuckle down on I suppose.

“I have not been involved in our first lot of games because of my injury, but we are conceding bad goals and making it difficult for ourselves because of mistakes.

‘‘We have to buck our ideas up and stop all that.”

Blues are struggling for goals – only Portsmouth have scored fewer than their five – and Ridgewell said all were well aware of the problem.