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Match Review
Match Number: 607
Date: Saturday 30th January 2010
Kick-Off: 3:00pm
Match: Birmingham City 1 Tottenham Hotspur 1
Competition: Barclays Premier League
Stadium: St Andrews
Attendance: 27,238 (tbc)
Stadium Stats
No. of visits to stadium: 1
Total no. of stadiums visited: 110
Programme and Ticket
Photos
Review
Travel to match
Method of Travel: Car
Travelling time: 3hrs 20mins
My wife and I were spending the weekend in Birmingham so we set off on the Thursday afternoon. Leaving Carlisle at 2:10pm we stopped off for a break at Knutsford Services at 3:55pm for half an hour. The final part of the journey was extremely slow especially with all the 50mph average speed check roadwork sections, and hitting the Midlands at rush hour is never good. We eventually arrived at our hotel near West Bromwich at 6:00pm.
Pre-Match
Before the match we spent an enjoyable couple of hours at Cadbury's World
towards the South of the city. Driving to the match was relatively straight
forward and I was dropped off outside the stadium so I didn't have to
worry about parking.
Stadium
Three sides of St Andrews have been redeveloped in the 90's and although
I don't particularly like the Tilton Road End or Spion Kop the Railway
End is individual and quite unique. The Main Stand is the oldest and relatively
small and looking somewhat tired.
Admission
I bought tickets through the Birmingham City FC website and booked for the Kop Stand (Block S25) at £33.00. There was a £1.50 admin and postage charge on top of this and the tickets arrived a few days later. The view was excellent as I was on row 37 of 38 and the leg room was reasonable.
Programme
£3.00 got you XXX pages which for home fans would be ok but there wasn't much to interest me in it.
Food and Drink
We had eaten early in the morning and again at Cadbury's World so I didn't
get anything in the ground.
The Game
The game wasn't the best (although not as bad as Match of the Day and Alan Hansen in particular would have you believe) and Tottenham should have had the game wrapped up easily. The controlled it from the start but didn't take their chances while Birmingham produced very little with no quality up front and little creativity from midfield.
Home Fans
The Birmingham fans were fairly quiet and it was probably half way through the first half when the first decent signing started.
Away Fans
Spurs sold out their allocation of probably around 4,500 and they got behind their team well particularly in the first half.
Stewards / Police
There was plenty of stewards and police both inside and outside the ground and they seemed ok.
The Ref
I thought the referee was excellent bar a few late decisions which were
questionable involving Luka Modric.
The Journey Home
Travelling time: 2hrs 55mins
We left the hotel at 9:25am and headed to Warrington Ikea for some shopping - the M6 from Birmingham up to Stoke was full of roadwork's which like the journey down had the 50mph average speed checks which slowed us down somewhat. After some shopping and lunch we left at 1:20pm arriving home at 3:05pm.
Statistics
Travel: £30.00
Ticket: £33.00
Programme: £3.00
Total: £69.00
Mileage: 390
Travelling time: 6hrs 15mins
Stadium character: 8/10
Facilities: 7/10
View of pitch: 9/10
Atmosphere home fans: 4/10
Atmosphere away fans: 3/10
Match Rating: 6/10
Wish to go back to stadium: 8/10
Photos
