Birmingham City 0-0 Stoke City: Blues and Potters stay unbeaten after stalemate
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Steven Fletcher's second-minute effort was as close as Stoke came at St Andrew's
Birmingham and Stoke maintained their unbeaten starts to the season as they played out a goalless draw at St Andrew's.
Steven Fletcher forced an early save from Blues goalkeeper Matija Sarkic, but the hosts responded well and created the better chances.
Skipper Harlee Dean headed just past the post from Marc Roberts' long throw, and Scott Hogan fired inches wide after pouncing on Leo Ostigard's weak header.
Gary Gardner poked the ball into the net late on after Dean flicked on another Roberts long throw, but the effort was ruled out for offside.
Both teams came into the game after a positive first week of the season, winning their league openers and making progress in the EFL Cup.
Birmingham welcomed fans back to St Andrew's for a league match for the first time since last March, but numbers remained restricted, with two stands closed for repairs.
Stoke, who have not won away to Birmingham in 13 visits since October 1988, started the brighter, yet the hosts gradually took charge.
Moments after his first-half near-miss, Hogan was put through on goal by Ivan Sunjic's through-ball, but sliced a shot towards the corner flag.
A tight second half failed to live up to an entertaining first period as the Blues failed to register an effort on target, although Gardner was only denied a dramatic late winner by an assistant referee's flag.
Stoke had found the net five times in their opening two matches but also failed to trouble Sarkic after the break as Birmingham chalked up their third straight clean sheet.
Birmingham head coach Lee Bowyer told BBC WM 95.6:
"Both teams worked extremely hard, out of possession especially, and I felt we both cancelled each other out.
"I think on clear-cut chances we edged it, but unfortunately for us we didn't manage to take those chances.
"It wasn't pretty on the eye, but we've got another clean sheet against a good Stoke side which is something positive for me. Overall I think a point was fair."
Stoke boss Michael O'Neill:
"We didn't do enough to win the game. I didn't feel like we were ever going to lose it to be honest.
"We dealt with what we knew we were going to deal with, which was a lot of long throws and balls into the box. We dealt with that very well.
"We can't have 30 seconds for every throw-in, that's where the time goes. Then we had three minutes at the end. That's just the nature of the game and there's a lot of games in the Championship that end up like that.
"If you're going to get out of the Championship, you have to aspire to be a better team than that and obviously that's what we're trying to do."