BARRY Ferguson was sent-off in injury time and James McFadden missed a second-half penalty as Birmingham and Manchester City fought out a goalless draw at St Andrews yesterday.
Manchester City goalkeeper Shay Given produced a superb display to earn Mark Hughes' side a point which their below-par performance barely deserved. The former Newcastle player made a string of fine saves, the highlight his stop to deny McFadden's le
ft-foot effort from the spot.
It was a fourth successive draw in the Barclays Premier League for City, and the point moved them up to fourth in the table. But Hughes, who celebrated his 46th birthday yesterday, knows City will have to show a massive improvement if they are to sustain their challenge.
His expensive bunch of players never came to terms with the swirling wind and a fired-up Birmingham team exuding confidence after last week's win over Sunderland.
The Eastlands outfit missed the threat up front of the injured Emmanuel Adebayor and struggled to break down a defence in which centre-backs Roger Johnson and Scott Dann were rock-solid performers.
The visitors also failed to come to grips with midfield, where Ferguson was a key performer – before he was red carded in injury-time for a second bookable offence – while up front the pace of Christian Benitez always kept them on their toes.
In the ninth minute, Benitez came close to giving Birmingham the lead. His low 20-yard drive took a deflection off Vincent Kompany and crashed against Given's left-hand post.
Birmingham looked the more dangerous, and Given was forced to tip over a swerving McFadden drive after being found in space by Benitez. Ferguson became the first player to be yellow-carded after 27 minutes, when blocking off a touchline run from Craig Bellamy.
Taylor blocked a point-blank-range effort from Roque Santa Cruz after good play by Carlos Tevez and Wright-Phillips down the right flank.
Given again excelled himself when saving a fierce attempt from Bowyer, before Dann was yellow-carded in first-half injury-time for a challenge on Tevez.
Alex McLeish's side had a golden chance to take the lead after 56 minutes when Nigel De Jong handled the ball in an aerial challenge with Sebastian Larsson and conceded a penalty. But Given was again his side's saviour as he dived away to his left to keep out McFadden's spot-kick.
There was a rare threat to the Birmingham goal when Taylor tipped over a Tevez cross shot as Birmingham edged further away from the bottom three. Ferguson earned his red card after knocking the ball out of Pablo Zabaleta's hands as he attempted to take an injury-time throw.
Given thanked his lucky stars for the penalty save. He said: "It was a bit of luck I suppose. It's a bit of a lottery, penalties, for goalkeepers, and luckily today I've gone the right way and got a strong enough hand to get it away."
But he continued: "We're disappointed, these are games where we're looking to pick up three points. Credit to Birmingham, they had good spirit today and a good workrate in their team. But we were coming here today looking for three points, and the same against Fulham last week when we threw away a two-goal lead, so we've been disappointed in the last couple of weeks."
Home manager McLeish was also frustrated by the outcome. "We're disappointed in there (the dressing room] not to have three points, and that's a measure of how our team played today," he said. "James McFadden again today looked very sharp supporting the front two but just perhaps lacked that bit of composure in front of goal. I'm hoping that will come, I think it will."
Scotland forward McFadden was withdrawn shortly after his miss from the spot, and his fellow countryman joked: "Yeah, it was a hopeless miss wasn't it? He deserved to come off after that. No, he was struggling a wee bit and maybe the fresh pair of legs in the end helped us."
On Ferguson's sending-off, McLeish added:
"He's apologised to myself and his team-mates. He had another influential game and it's disappointing to lose him, we can't afford the indiscipline over the season, especially with such a fragile squad."
