Manchester City 0 Birmingham 0: Full time report
Roberto Mancini felt the full weight of frustration as his Manchester City side were booed off after their second goalless draw in four days at Eastlands.
Just as against Manchester United on Wednesday, the entertainment value was sadly lacking, except this time City were playing against a side who could be in the bottom three by tomorrow evening.
James Milner came closest to breaking the deadlock, 15 seconds after the interval, when his shot was cleared off the line by Stephen Carr.
It was not impressive stuff though for a side who, whilst remaining in a Champions League position, have now won just one match from their last five Premier League outings and have not scored a league goal on home soil since the beginning of October.
That Mancini compounded this by taking crowd favourite Carlos Tevez off before the end, and replacing him with Gareth Barry, just heightened a sense of unhappiness at the sight of an obdurate Birmingham outfit heading back down the M6 with a precious point.
As Birmingham turned out in a red away kit that could have passed for Manchester United, it was easy to believe this was simply a continuation of Wednesday night's awful fare.
There were obvious differences. For a start, Birmingham were intent on defending their penalty area, a tactic that became apparent within the first five minutes.
Aleksandar Kolarov was introduced for only his second start of the season, a notable figure if only because he came across from his left-back station to take City's right-wing corners.
And Adam Johnson was picked, offering the England star to match his words of discontent about forcing himself into Mancini's plans so infrequently, with meaningful action.
Unfortunately, the end product was depressingly similar to a midweek derby generally acknowledged to be one of the worst of recent times.
If anything, due to a chronic lack of atmosphere mainly, this was even worse.
Ben Foster did not have a first half save to make, or at least the one he did need to make but failed, turned out to be of no consequence anyway as Carlos Tevez was ruled to have handled David Silva's cross to get it past the England man.
Referee Mike Jones got that call right, just as he was probably correct to rule it was not a penalty when Liam Ridgewell went down under Johnson's challenge.
